


No Savior to be Found

by Duchess_On_Fire



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Feels, BAMF Carl Grimes, Carl was Shane's soldier and now he is Negan's, Foul language & swearing, I wanted to put hurt/comfort but it's TWD so not much comfort to be found, Judith is named Lori because you know Shane would never let Carl name her, M/M, Mentions of Emotional Abuse, Negan can be real friendly when he's not threatening to kill Carl, Power Dynamics, Rick never found Lori & Carl, Savior!Carl, Shane raised Carl after the apocalypse, Slow Build, So basically Negan, carl is 18, carl is a badass, it goes about as well as you can expect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28656471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duchess_On_Fire/pseuds/Duchess_On_Fire
Summary: "Who are you?"Carl bites his tongue, trying to prevent his countenance from betraying his rapid-fire pulse and the thin sheen of sweat that is forming inside his palms. He knows the answer that is expected of him.On his left, the Saviors are watching with slight amusement, his predicament the closest thing to a TV they have at their disposal. In front of him, Negan has lost his usual smirk, and is now watching him with his most frightening expression - one of patient seriousness. On his right, Shane is looking at him expectantly."I'm Negan," he answers, because what choice does he have.**In a world where Rick never found Carl & Lori, Carl has managed to keep himself and his sister alive in spite of Shane's growing madness. After surviving the apocalypse with Shane, Negan is nothing he can't handle... Right?
Relationships: Carl Grimes & Negan, Pre-Carl/Negan
Comments: 13
Kudos: 56





	1. I'm Negan

**Author's Note:**

> This work is the first part of a series that will eventually become Carl/Negan, though not for the first installment, so even if it's not your thing, feel free to keep reading.
> 
> Also, Carl hasn't lost his eye............ yet ;)
> 
> Enjoy! :)

"Who are you?" Carl bites his tongue, trying to prevent his countenance from betraying his rapid-fire pulse and the thin sheen of sweat that is forming inside his palms. He knows the answer that is expected of him.

On his left, the Saviors are watching with slight amusement, his predicament the closest thing to a TV they have at their disposal. In front of him, Negan has lost his usual smirk, and is now watching him with his most frightening expression - one of patient seriousness. On his right, Shane is looking at him expectantly.

"I'm Negan," he answers, because what choice does he have.

**

Carl doesn't think about the people he's lost.

He doesn't think about his father, whose memory has become fuzzy over the years, nothing more than big hands and blue eyes and a reassuring presence dropping him to school in the mornings. At least his father is not here to see what the world looks like once it's ruled by the dead.

He doesn't think about his mother. Doesn't think about her laughing, or smiling, or calling him a punk, or crying as she gave birth to his sister in the dirty basement of the prison. He doesn't think about shooting her in the head before she could turn.

He doesn't think about Sophia, or her kind mother Carol, who were both too sweet for this world. He doesn't think about Hershel or Beth. He doesn't think about Dale, or Andrea and her sister, or all the other people who started this journey with them.

He doesn't think about Glenn or Abraham.

Sometimes, he still thinks about Maggie. He wonders if it would be easier if he knew for sure she was dead, instead of thinking about her wandering on her own, pregnant and friendless.

Instead, he thinks about the living. He thinks about his sister Lori who is growing up every day in a world that wants her dead. He thinks about Shane - dad - who, in spite of everything, is still his best shot at keeping both himself and his sister alive. He thinks about the people back at Alexandria: Sasha, Rosita, Eugene, Enid, Aaron, Denise... All the people who can still be protected if he makes the right choices, the right moves.

As Carl lays on his bare mattress in the Saviors' compound, Shane sleeping soundlessly on the bed, he reminds himself that it all rests on him. Shane is a gun always ready to go off. As long as Carl can point him in the right direction, it can all be alright. It has to be.

**

"Shit, that's your son?" Negan whistles mockingly. "I would never have called it, honestly. You guys look about as alike as Fat Joey and Skinny Joey over here." Carl clenches his teeth, just as the vein on Shane's temple starts to throb. _I gotta keep him calm_ , he thinks urgently, _or we're both dead_. And that is not option. Baby Lori alone in the world is not an option.

Thankfully, Negan just laughs some more before raising his gloved hands in a placating gesture. "Hey, no offense, big guy. That's a good looking kid you have here, must take after his mama, that's all. However," and here Negan's good-natured smile evaporates, making Carl wonder if his showman attitude is all an act, "that's not gonna work for me. I like my men unattached. No wives, no kids. Same goes for the badass ladies I've got following me. Helps make sure they stay focused on the job. Distractions get you killed, and I don't fuckin’ like it when my men get killed, as I'm sure you've noticed."

"Carl can fight. He's ready to join too. He wants to," Shane says decidedly, but Negan just shakes his head, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Look, man. This ain't the boy scouts. I'm not coaching little league here. I want ice-cold, heartless, fearless fucking killing machines to do my bidding. So you and your kid are just gonna have to walk back to your home and start producing shit for me, because that is what I actually need from you both."

 _Shit, shit, shit_ , Carl thinks as Negan starts to turn around, swinging his bat lazily in circles by his side. Shane takes a step forward and the Saviors around them immediately raise their rifles. Carl would be afraid, but he's learned to recognize all of Shane's postures. He knows all the signs pointing to when he is about to go off, and this is not one of those moments. The back of Shane's neck is sweaty, but his shoulders are squared straight and his hands are steady. Obviously, Negan doesn't feel threatened either since he raises his hand, and half-turns toward them, resting Lucille over his shoulder expectantly.

"Carl has killed. Not just dead ones. People too. He knows what the world is like now, he knows it's killed or be killed. I made sure of that." Shane is poised, his voice calm and serious. It's so unexpected that Carl suddenly has a flashback of the very beginning, when he was just a kid running around with his cowboy hat, playing with Sophia in the clearing, confident in the fact that nothing bad could ever happen to him as long as Shane and his mom were there. He blinks, forcing himself to get back to the present just as Negan's smile stretches further, revealing the gleaming points of his teeth.

"Really? Is that so? Do we have a little Terminator among us?" The Saviors explode in laughter and Carl bites his tongue, embarrassed and embarrassed to be embarrassed. He can feel himself flushing and suddenly longs for his gun. Negan takes a few languid steps forward, a tiger prowling toward an easy meal, until they are toe to toe, and Carl hates how he makes a show of bending down so he can look him in the eyes. Carl tries to stay impassive, praying not to betray too much, but Negan's own gray eyes are twinkling with delight.

Suddenly, Carl doesn't just long for his gun, he longs for a knife. A machete. A hatchet.

This is the man who killed Abraham.

This is the man who killed Glenn.

Suddenly, he longs for a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.

As if reading his train of thoughts, Negan's smile slowly recedes, until it is barely there, a wisp of something that Carl has trouble identifying.

"Oh yeah," Negan chuckles fondly, still gazing intently at him. "We've got a little serial killer on our hands, alright." He straightens and looks at Shane, his showman's smile back on his face. "Fine, I'll bite. We'll give you both a chance to earn your spot. Any other secret kid that don't look like you I gotta know about?"

"My daughter's four, she's back in Alexandria. She's safe there."

Negan scoffs. "Shit, man, I was making a goddamn joke. Fine, Jesus, fine. But I'm warning you, this ain't a bring-your-kids-to-work type of deal. You're not getting a pass just because you popped two buns inside the missus' oven. Better get your head in the game, _papi_. Same goes for you, kid, if you don't want Lucille to bash your head in, eyes first. She likes ‘em baby blues, and you're just her favorite shade."

**

“Maggie. We have to leave _now_. Maggie!”

Carl is startled from his sleep, but he can’t hear anything around the campfire. No moaning from walkers, no twig snapping, no leaves rustling. There is nothing but the scent of ashes from the dying fire and the pale light of the dawn barely peeking through the dark sky of the night.

“Maggie, please, let’s go!”

Glenn’s whispers are hushed, barely audible over the whistling sound of Lori sleeping on Carl’s chest, her nose safely hidden in his long-growing hair. Suddenly, Carl realizes what's happening.

He knows what he should do. He should let them know that he’s awake. Tell them that they can’t leave. Tell them that Shane will hunt them down wherever they go. Tell them that now that the prison has fallen, now that they have all been separated, now that Hershel, Carol, T-Dog and Beth are dead, they have no chance of making it on their own. Their only chance is to push forward and stay together.

He doesn’t say anything and he keeps his eyes closed instead.

“We can’t leave,” Maggie whispers.

“Yes, we can, but it has to be now before Shane gets back! Come on!”

“No, Glenn, we can’t. We can’t leave them.”

“We talked about this. You saw what he did, how he is. He killed all those people at the prison - Karen and David... He never confessed but you know it was him! He’s losing it, Maggie. He’s been losing it since Lori died and now we’re all out here and scattered. He’s gonna get us killed, unless we leave right now!”

“I’m not talking about him,” Maggie whispers decisively, always brave, never intimidated, even in front of Shane. “I’m talking about _them._ ”

For a second, Carl has no idea who she is talking about. They are alone out there. He thinks he saw Sasha, Tyreese and Bob get away from the swarm of walkers flooding the prison, but he can’t be sure.

“You really want to leave them out here with him? You could really live with that? Because I couldn’t.”

“Maggie,” Glenn sighs, imploring.

“Lori made me promise to watch over her baby. And Carl is just a boy still. You’re right, Shane is losing it. So we can’t leave him with them. Either we all leave together, or we all stay. But I’m not leaving them behind.” Her tone is final. Carl listens some more, trying to make his breathing match Lori’s, but he doesn’t hear anything else.

By the time Shane gets back and shakes him awake, taking Lori from his arms, Glenn and Maggie are still here.

**

Once they set foot in the courtyard in front of the chemical plant – the Sanctuary – Negan’s men take Shane away. Carl tenses, but they took his gun and his knife, and he is already inside the wolf’s den. All he can do is watch as they manhandle him inside, and the last thing he sees is Shane’s snarling expression before the door slams behind them.

“Chill, kid. We’re just gonna put your dad in a special room for tonight. Gotta make sure he’s one hundred percent ready and motivated to become one of us. Sort of like rush night. And tomorrow, he can join the baddest fraternity there is. And so can you.”

A weight settles on his shoulder, and Carl stops breathing when he realizes that it’s the top of Lucille resting near his collarbone. It takes all his strength to stop himself from squirming. Behind him, Negan chuckles with dark amusement.

“Oh yeah, you’re a badass, alright. Look at you trying to play it cool when you’re literally two seconds away from pissing your pants. I _like_ it.”

The weight of the baseball bat on his shoulder intensifies as he hears Negan stepping right behind him, until he can feel his warm breath next to his ear and the prickle of the barbed wire getting caught in the fabric of his plaid shirt.

“But let’s get one thing clear, kid,” and this time, Carl can’t stop the dread that fills his throat, because this voice, this is Negan’s _don’t fuck with me_ voice. There is not an ounce of banter in his tone. “If this is a trick, if your old man thinks he can pull one over me, then I don’t give a shit about you or that baby sister of yours back in the suburbs. I _will_ kill you both, and it won’t be quick, and it definitely won’t be pretty. Are we clear?”

 _Answer, you need to answer him **now**_ , Carl thinks, but it still takes a few seconds for him to muster enough breath to speak.

“It’s not a trick,” he says, his voice only barely betraying the absolute terror that fills him, Glenn and Abraham's own gruesome deaths flashing before his eyes.

Negan remains silent for what seems like eternity, each of his exhale a warm gush of air next to Carl’s cheek. He smells like peppermint and whiskey.

“Good.”

When the weight of Lucille is lifted from his shoulder, it feels like someone is finally letting go of their choke-hold over Carl’s throat. He breathes in deeply, inhaling the slightly putrid air from the walkers attached to the fence.

“Well come on, kid! Let me give you the grand tour.”

**

“We can do this,” Shane tells them as they are all sitting inside the church, a preacher guiding his flock. “Those Saviors guys, they are bullies. And we don’t kneel to bullies, we deal with them. Y’all know we’re running out of food. Running out of medical supplies. But we got guns, and we got ammos and we got those RPGs that Sasha and Abraham brought back with them. I say we do it quick, and we do it clean. Middle of the night, while they're sleeping. No mercy, no prisoners, no survivors. In exchange, the Hilltop’s agreed to get us food and medicine. Now, I know I’ve told you guys that this ain’t a democracy. But if we do this, we all need to be in on it. So if you’ve got grievances, now’s the time to speak up.”

For a while, everyone is silent, but Carl can feel people fidgeting and he sees some of them exchanging wary glances.

Spencer stands up.

“You’re making us go into war. And for what? We don’t need the Hilltop. We’ve managed fine for years without needing anyone else. All you’ve done so far is get people killed. Now you want us to put ourselves in even more danger? I say we keep scavenging. We keep to ourselves. We don’t know these people, and we don’t know their beef with the Saviors. But I know my mom would never have agreed to something like this.” While speaking, Spencer slowly turns around, looking every original Alexandrian in the eye, ignoring their own group, before nodding and finally seating down.

Whispers of agreement can be heard inside the church, like the quiet murmur of a dissenting wind picking up.

Shane’s face is calm and composed, but Carl can see his fingers tapping a quick impatient rhythm on his hip, right above his machete. Spencer has been a growing problem for Shane lately. He’s the last of the Monroes, and he still has influence over the original Alexandrians. Shane has had his eye on Spencer, and so Carl has taken it upon himself to watch him too. He’s not outwardly dangerous, he can’t be. He doesn’t have the guts or the strength to be a real threat. But lately, he’s grown bitter about Shane taking over after his mother’s death. He’s been secretive and closed-off, weaseling supplies from the pantry and the armory, no doubt making himself some caches ahead of troubles. Carl doesn’t like him, but mostly he pities him. Everyone he loved died, and he’s stupid enough to think he can take on Shane and make it out alive. If Carl had been a better person, he would have warned him. Or he would have tried to appease Shane. As it is, he can’t bring himself to waste energy on that. He’s got his sister and his own group to think about.

“Is there really no other way?” Glenn asks.

Shane looks up from where he's been staring pensively at Spencer, no doubt thinking about how he could hack his head off without starting a riot.

Shane and Glenn have an uneasy truce. They don’t trust each other and don’t like each other, but they’ve fought the dead and the living together. They’ve made it this far because they know how to work together as a team. Glenn knows Shane is the best fighter among them, and Shane knows Glenn is the string keeping their group together. With Glenn comes Maggie, and with them come Abraham, Rosita, Eugene and Sasha.

Carl isn’t prepared for how Shane turns toward him.

“What do you think, son? Is there any other way?”

He’s been doing that a lot lately. Asking for Carl’s opinion. Getting him to share what he thinks. It always unsettles Carl, after years spent being either ignored or bossed around. Maybe Shane has stopped thinking of him as a child. Maybe he’s really managed to gain Shane’s utter and complete trust over the years.

Maybe Shane just knows that Carl will always think about Lori’s safety first, and that means following Shane’s lead.

“No,” Carl says. “It’s the only way.”

**

As he follows Negan around the complex, watching him joke and swing Lucille around gleefully as people around them kneel, Carl can't help but feel reluctant admiration. He's never seen so many people in the same place since before, never seen so many trades and goods. People are getting their hair cut, clothes are being sewn from scratch, homemade pickles and sugar candies are displayed, all sorts of medicine and electronics are being traded. Even in the lugubrious atmosphere of the chemical plant, it's still a wondrous sight.

And Negan made it happen.

 _Still_ , Carl thinks bitterly, _it's no Alexandria_. The Monroes may not have achieved something of this magnitude, but they never had to kill anyone to gain what they had. Not until Shane and the rest of them came along anyway. He wonders what kind of man Negan was before all this. Was he like his father, a protector of his community? Was he a politician, or a member of the elite like the Monroes? Or was he like Shane, a good guy who spun out of control when the apocalypse came along?

Somehow, this thought disturbs Carl.

Could Shane have turned into someone like Negan? They both have murderous tempers, but Negan seems to have a vision, as terrible as it is. He built something, while all Shane has ever done is find himself around people who could build for him. Hershel, back at the farm, and then at the prison. Deanna in Alexandria. Kind people, soft people, who accepted that Shane was a necessary evil to stay alive, just as Carl had long ago. He wonders then: if things had been better, would Shane have been able to have a vision of his own? Before he lost his mind, before he turned into a feral animal only looking as far as the next shelter, the next meal, the next enemy to kill. When did that even happen? Carl has been a constant witness to his slow descent into hell, but he still has trouble pinpointing the exact moment when Shane stopped being his hero and protector and instead turned into his own personal grenade - a good threat to keep hostiles away, but always on the verge of blowing up between his fingers. Was it when the Dixon brothers stole everything from their camps and disappeared in the middle of the night? Was it when they lost half of their people in the walkers’ attack not long after? Was it when they found Fort Benning overrun? Or when they found Sophia inside the Greene's barn? Was it when his mother died? Or when the walkers took down the fences of the prison, when everyone was too sick to control their overcrowding? Was it during Terminus, or their long wandering afterward, surviving on scraps and drops of rainwater?

Perhaps it's useless to try and find just one moment. Perhaps it was less like a bomb being triggered and more like a slow erosion over time, each day weakening the foundations of who Shane used to be.  
  


**

After spending all day being shown around the Sanctuary, after being fed and brought to a cozy room with a kitchen area and comfy seats, Carl feels the sudden need to correct him.

"He's not really my dad."

Negan turns from the well-stocked fridge he was in the process of showing to Carl, once again praising the future that will await them once they join his army.

"Come again, kid?"

"Shane," he clarifies, though he has no idea why. He's never bothered to tell anyone else. Not since the very beginning. Everyone who might have known that Shane wasn't his father is dead now. Still, here, in the Sanctuary, with Negan, it feels important. "He's not really my dad."

Negan looks at him expectantly, his face appearing older when he’s not smiling his manic smile. But also strangely kinder.

"Then why in the hell are you calling him that? Fuck, wait, tell me this ain't some kinky baby/daddy shit. A few of my wives call me that and I'd really like to be able to get laid without thinking about Shane's ugly mug while I'm balls deep in pussy."

Carl ignores the vulgarity, mainly because he's got no idea how to respond to it. He's made the mistake of starting to confide about his relationship with Shane, something he hasn't done in years, and he now finds that he wants to move on as soon as possible.

"My dad died before all of this. He got shot. He was a sheriff's deputy and Shane was his partner. When everything happened, Shane kept us safe, me and my mom. And then... They got together. Had my sister. So he asked me to call him that."

Negan is still looking at him, listening, actually listening, without a smile or a joke on his lips. Instead, he asks: "And your mom? Where is she now? Back in Alexandria?"

That would have been nice, Carl thinks. She would have been happy there, with a house, a front porch, a kitchen table to have pancakes on Sunday. Carl tries to swallow the knot in his throat, but he knows that everything he's thinking is displayed clear as day on his face. Negan sighs, rubs his hand over his eyes. "Shit, kid. That sucks balls. Did you... Were you there? When it happened?" He sounds almost concerned. Carl would have laughed, but the gunshot still echoes in his mind as it did in that boiler room. Without intending to, more words start pouring out.

"I shot her. Before she could... I had to."

He doesn’t dare look up from his feet. Maybe he doesn’t want to see more pity on Negan’s face. Mostly, he’s worried about what Negan will be able to see on his own.

"Jeez. No wonder you're a little serial killer in the making. And I mean that in the best sense possible, kid.”

**

“How do you want to call her?” Maggie asks as she washes the blood from her hands.

They are still in the courtyard, by the water pump. Sasha, Carol and Glenn are out scavenging for formula. Tyreese and T-Dog are clearing their cell block from the walkers that have been attracted by the fire alarm. Shane has gone back inside, and Carl knows him enough by now to guess that he is probably in a killing frenzy over Lori’s death. She was his mother long before she was Shane’s girlfriend, but there is no point saying that out loud.

Instead, he looks down to the baby in his arms. After all these months spent preparing for it, it feels surreal to see another human being. A baby. Here. His sister.

“I think Shane will wanna decide that,” he mutters, still not letting his sight stray from her tiny face. He’s afraid if he stops looking, she will just disappear. As long as he keeps looking, she’s here. As long as he keeps looking, he can’t think about what he just did.

“Yeah, but he isn’t here now. So how would you like to call her?”

Maggie shakes her hands dry and gestures for him to give the baby to her. He does so reluctantly. He knows she needs to be washed, but he immediately feels cold and hollow without her weight in his arms. She’s the most alive thing he’s seen since the world ended. And she’s his baby sister. It’s gonna be up to him to care for her and keep her safe. Safe from walkers. Safe from people who would like to hurt them. Safe from people who would like to take her away from him.

He tries to think back on the last time he felt safe.

“I had this teacher at school. She was really nice to us. Her name was Judith.”

Maggie hums as she scoops some water in her hand and let it trickle delicately over his sister’s forehead.

“Judith. That’s a beautiful name.”

Hours later, when Shane comes back up from the insides of the prison, covered in blood and gore and with a mad look in his eyes, Carl knows what he has to do. He has to keep her safe.

Shane decides the baby will be called Lori.

**

The next day, Shane ignores the blonde Savior girl trying to steer him toward his room and instead declares he’ll stay in Carl’s.

Carl doesn’t say anything. He just lets Shane get the bed and looks back toward the blonde Savior eyeing them doubtfully from the doorway.

“I’m gonna go find another mattress,” she mutters.

“I’m not leaving you alone with these people,” Shane says darkly once she’s closed the door and her footsteps have receded down the hallway. “They’re trying to split us up. Weaken us. We won’t let them.”

**

“This is our best shot. You wanna stay here and go belly-up like a bitch for Negan?” Shane spits. “We’re soldiers, you and I, Carl. We can make Negan see that.”

“You wanna join him? After what he did to Glenn? To Abraham? To _Maggie_?”

“Maggie sealed her own damn fate when she sneaked out of Alexandria in the middle of the night!” He snarls. “Without her, we got nothing left. Rosita and Sasha can’t get their head on straight, Eugene and Aaron are useless, fuckin’ Spencer’s breathin’ down my neck, tryin’ to plot something, underminin’ me to everyone. This place is powder keg and if we do nothin’, it’s gonna blow. We need to get the upper hand here. And you’ve seen Negan. You’ve seen the numbers and weapons he has. He’s the…”

Shane breathes out, as if the next words physically pain him. “He’s the top dog, here, Carl. And what have I told you about those?”

“If you can’t beat them, join them,” Carl mumbles. He’s pissed, and can’t believe what he’s hearing, but he’s got no other angle to play. They’re still reeling and licking their wounds from what happened in the clearing. Unfortunately, Shane is right. Rosita and Sasha are on the war path, but they are the only ones. Everyone else is scared shitless and they’re all scrambling to find things to appease the Soldiers for the next drop. Spencer, especially, has been uncommonly active, volunteering for every outing with a smile and a spring in his step.

“We gotta think about Lori, son,” and Carl knows that’s the final blow. “If Spencer tries something against me next time Negan’s here, she’s gonna be the first collateral damage. But if we join Negan before him, if we join his group, we can keep this place safe. We can keep her safe.”

Fuck.

**

Carl tries to sneak around the compound. It’s hard, they are being watched closely, followed by armed Saviors everywhere they go. Negan told Shane he has plans for them the next day. In the meantime, they are told to relax, enjoy the Sanctuary, and take a rest.

“You’re gonna need it,” Negan grins wolfishly.

Shane is on his guard, wound up like a bomb and ready to go off at the slightest move against them. At the end of the day, between the two of them, they’ve figured out the best weak spots to try to make an exit if things go south.

**

“One day, you’re gonna wake up, and I’m not gonna be here. Lori won’t be here either. You’ll be all alone in the woods, with nothing but a pistol and a knife. That’s what you want, Carl? Is that what you want? _Answer me, boy!_ ”

**

They ride for a day and a night, sleeping only a handful of hours in cars and in the back of trucks.

They arrive in front of a pathway marked by signs aggressively telling them to keep out. Negan just pushes the gate open while whistling cheerfully, Lucille resting on his shoulders.

They keep walking. More signs threaten them of ending up shot in the head if they go on forward. A final sign tells them that if they’re still alive, it means that the owner of the land is dead.

_Have at it, assholes._

Negan taps Lucille again the sign with a fond chuckle as they walk by.

When they see the boat anchored in the distance, the canoe pierced by bullet holes on the edge of the water, and the lake swimming with walkers in-between, Carl and Shane exchange a terrible look of understanding.

“I’ve had my eyes on that prize for a while now,” Negan tells them as he paces lazily along the water bank. “There might really be guns and food and medicine on that boat. Or there might be nothing. In any case, it would probably cost me a few men, and I didn’t feel like wasting valuable resources on a gamble like that. Thankfully,” he points his bat toward them with a shark-like smile. “I’ve got two new recruits just raring to go and prove themselves to me. How fucking great is that?”

He turns his back to them and looks at the boat with a knowing smirk.

“Shane. Carl. Go get me my shit.”

_To be continued._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though I am proficient in English, it is not my first language and Negan's dialogues are a pain in the butt to write. So feel free to point out any mistakes or anything you believe can be improved!
> 
> Hope you've enjoyed it, kudos and comments are always deeply appreciated :)


	2. The hard way is the only way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane takes to the Sanctuary like a fish to water. Carl stands back and watches.

“Shane, you can’t be serious. Carl can’t come with us to the satellite station.”

Maggie’s voice interrupts Carl as he’s about to get down the stairs after putting Lori down for a nap, and he instinctively stops, his footsteps muffled by the beige carpeting of their house in Alexandria.

“Why not? He’s a fighter and a good one. You’ve seen him at Terminus.”

“Shooting from afar at people who are trying to kill you is not the same as executing a man while he’s asleep. Shane, he’s too young for this.”

“Too young?” Shane scoffs. “Too young? Are you kidding me with this bullshit? So – so what, we’re not supposed to let him have a drink because he’s not 21? Is that it, Maggie? So when exactly is he going to be old enough for this? Uh? When? Next year? Two years from now? When do you think is the right age _to survive_?”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“I don’t care what you mean. All I know is that Carl is a fighter, and I know he’ll have my back in there. Which is more than I can say for you or Glenn. I remember you guys while we were dealing with what was left of those cannibal freaks after Terminus. Carl, Sasha, Rosita, Abraham and I, we all did what we had to. And the two of you, what did you do? Just stood back and watched. At least Tyreese had the gut to admit that he was a coward but you… You guys said you were on board with the plan. You agreed to it. And then what did you do? Nothing. So don’t ever come to me and assume that I don’t know what’s best for Carl, because unlike you, he knows how to make the hard calls. He knows that sometimes the hard way is the only way.”

**

“Well, hot damn!” Negan exclaims as Shane steers the boat toward the makeshift landing dock. “That was something, wasn’t it, people? I gotta say, Shane, for a minute there I really didn’t think you guys were gonna make it. But make it, you did!”

Carl grits his teeth at the condescending tone. He reeks of putrid walkers, his clothes are wet and gross from the lake water, and he’s pretty sure he dislocated his shoulder trying to get onto the boat while dead ones were clawing at his feet. He really doesn’t have any patience left for Negan’s mockery.

When he sees the Saviors shouldering their rifles and jumping on board to unload the cargo that he and Shane risked their lives for, with nothing but their knives and their wits as back-up, he wants to stab them all in the neck.

Shane is fuming as well, his nostrils flaring and the vein on his forehead throbbing under the blood that is starting to cake around his temple. Carl sends him a glance, and they exchange a whole conversation in a silent look before Shane shakes his head.

_Stand down._

Shane helps the Saviors get the crates to shore while Carl disposes of the few walkers that gripped their ways onto the boat, plunging his blade into their soft skulls one-handed.

Once he disembarks after the last crate has been hauled, Negan looks him up and down.

“I gotta say, kid, I am impressed. You guys were like a two-man army down there.” His eyes settle on Carl’s arm, resting limp at his side. “Come on. We got a long road back before you can get looked at by the doc.”

“I’m fine,” Carl hisses, irked at being treated like he’s helpless. Didn’t he just demonstrate that he knows how to handle himself, while all these assholes stood with their guns and watched? “It’s just dislocated. Shane can pop it back; he’s done it before.”

Negan smiles, and there is nothing nice about it.

“I’m sure he has, kid. And I’m sure I’d love to see you take it like a champ, all dry eyes and gritted teeth. But you belong to me, now. And I take care of what’s mine. So there will be no half-assed, amateur bone-setting job done in the middle of fucking nowhere. We’ll ride back and you’ll go to the doc. Period.”

Carl looks at Negan defiantly, and the man holds his gaze with a knowing smirk, daring him to contradict him. He turns Lucille’s handle between his gloved fingers in a gesture that Carl can only define as eager.

“Fine,” Carl mutters, lowering his eyes, and he knows instantly that it’s going to be like that from now on. No matter how much he tries to fight Negan, it’s always going to end like that: with Carl standing down, humiliated and ashamed.

“Attaboy,” Negan murmurs, as he turns around, walking back toward the cars with a lazy sway of his hips.

“Let’s get this show on the road! I’ve got a bed and a whole line of wives waiting for me.”

**

“You gotta remember, buddy. A lot of sons of bitches out there are gonna be bigger and stronger than you.”

“Shane!” Lori calls out from where she is hanging their laundry to dry in the sun. Against the golden background of the Greene farm, everything is quiet and peaceful. Almost as if the world was just like before. Innocent and untouched.

“Sorry!”

Carl snickers and Shane sends him a playful wink before resuming his stance.

“So, you’re smaller and weaker. But that doesn’t mean sh – that doesn’t mean nothing if you can be smarter and faster than them, alright? Now, I’m gonna teach you how to see a punch or a kick coming, and you’re gonna avoid it, anyway you can. You can run, roll, duck, everything’s fair. You just gotta try to see where I’m gonna aim, alright?”

“When are you gonna teach me to beat up bad guys?” Carl asks eagerly.

“Real soon, buddy, I promise. But for now, you just watch and you duck, alright? That’s the most important thing, kiddo. You watch. And then you duck.”

**

Carl watches Negan. Watches the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he surveys his kingdom from above.

He needs to know this man as well as he knows Shane. He needs to know what makes him tick, needs to know how to recognize the signs of a violent outburst before it happens, needs to be able to read him and know what’s happening inside his mind. Knowing all of this is the only way he can make it.

But Negan is hard to read. Far harder than Shane.

He’s known Shane his whole life, for starters, and even after Shane lost pieces of himself, becoming less and less human, he was never a mystery. Shane rarely lies, and when he does he’s bad at it. People don’t believe Shane’s lies because he’s good at manipulating them. They believe him because usually, there is no other alternative. Like when he lied about killing Otis at the farm. Or when he lied about killing Karen and David and setting their diseased bodies on fire at the prison. Or about seeing Carol, Hershel and Beth get eaten on their way out.

Shane isn’t good at lying because he’s straightforward in his brutality.

Negan is a whole other matter.

He swings between banter and threats, his smile when he kills someone is the same smile he wears when he goes to see his wives. Unlike Shane whose killing sprees have always been motivated by pragmatism, a-kill-or-be-killed heat of the moment, Negan visibly revels in his own cruelty. He enjoys watching people kneel and quiver in front of him. He smirks at the way everyone flinches whenever he swings Lucille around. He can switch from happy to angry to playful in the blink of an eye. His mood changes so fast it feels like Carl is walking on shifting sand, never able to hold onto anything for support.

After so many years spent relying on his intimate knowledge of every one of Shane’s thoughts, it’s frustrating to be so easily destabilized.

But he keeps watching.

**

Being a Savior suits Shane like a second skin.

Carl doesn’t know why he finds that surprising, but he does. He knows that in Shane’s mind, loyalty stops where survival starts. He’s left people behind before, people who had turned into burdens, obstacles standing in the way of their survival. He’d stopped looking for Sophia. When Carol, Hershel and Beth were surrounded by walkers at the prison, he didn’t stop to help them. He made Carl go on, and Carl was carrying baby Lori, so he couldn’t stop to help them either. After, when they found their way back to Glenn and Maggie, he told Maggie that he’d seen her father and sister go down, and that there was nothing he could have done. It was a lie, but Carl didn’t see any outcome where him telling the truth would help. And of course, there was the moment in Alexandria, after the Wolves had come and the herd had found its way inside the walls, when Jessie and her two sons got bit by walkers and Shane shot them all in the head. _Mercy killings_ , he said. _They were good people,_ he said, _no need to let them suffer._ Carl barely knew Ron and Sam. Had never talked to them and the other teenagers much. _They’re kids, you’re a soldier,_ Shane said.

_You’ve got more important stuff to do than play video games and read comic books._

_You’ve got to keep your sister safe._

To this day, Carl still wonders if Shane had kept him away because he truly believed that Carl wasn’t a kid anymore, or if he was trying to steer Carl clear of whatever was happening between him and Jessie back then.

Still, in spite of all that happened, Carl didn’t expect Shane to forget about Glenn so quickly – if not out of loyalty or friendship, at least out of distrust for the Saviors, for what they are capable of.

As Carl watches Shane banter with the Saviors in their private mess hall in the Sanctuary, he realizes how naive he was to still believe that Shane could follow any kind of moral rule other than that of the survival of the fittest.

The Saviors were impressed by how they had handled the boat and the lake of walkers. They welcomed Shane, who quickly entered their fold. After a few days, it’s as if he’s always been one of them. They joke and drink and play pool and share stories and watch each other’s backs on runs.

Idly, Carl wonders if this version of Shane, rowdy and good-humored, was how he was with his father and the other deputies back at the sheriff’s station, before. He thinks he can remember, distantly, a past when Shane was nothing more than cool uncle Shane, who would take him to the arcade and to the ice cream parlor on weekends.

At least they are not being followed around the Sanctuary by armed guards anymore. The Saviors mainly ignore Carl. They don’t bother talking to him directly and only refer to him as “Shane’s kid” or “the kid”. They don’t see him as a threat, not by himself at least. They saw how efficient he was following Shane’s lead back at the boat, the both of them moving in tandem, communicating with barely a glance or a nod. But now that they’re back at the Sanctuary, they don’t pay him much attention. Instead, they treat him like they would one of Shane’s belongings, like his gun or his knife. Dangerous in somebody else’s hands, but harmless by itself.

Most of the time, Carl follows Shane around, shadowing him on watch duties and during their supply runs to other communities paying tribute to Negan, like the people living on the garbage heap down south or a group led by a man named the Governor in the west. The only time he’s not allowed to follow Shane outside is when the Saviors go get supplies from Alexandria. Negan keeps Carl at the Sanctuary as insurance, in case Shane tries to make a run for it with the other Alexandrians.

Clearly, Negan also overestimates Shane’s loyalty to Alexandria.

Carl doesn’t bother staying with Shane when he’s with the others in the mess hall. There is nothing useful for him to learn as the Saviors play games, drink booze and smoke cigars. Instead, he walks around the Sanctuary until he’s memorized every turn of every hallway, every guard’s rotation, every item that can be quickly grabbed from the marketplace or from unlocked rooms. The armory, with its assault rifles and heavy ammunition, is carefully guarded but Carl has already found two or three places where people tend to leave handguns unattended.

Negan doesn’t trust them to have guns inside the Sanctuary yet, so Shane has his machete, and Carl has a hunting knife, but nothing else.

Still, if anything happens, he’s ready.

**

Whenever Shane goes with Negan to get the drop from Alexandria, Carl can’t help but be nervous.

He knows the Sanctuary like the back of his hand now, and the other Saviors barely acknowledge his presence when they walk past him, but he still feels vulnerable at the Sanctuary without Shane here to have his back. Like a lost rabbit who was dumb enough to wander inside the wolf’s den. No matter how well Shane fits in with the Saviors, not matter all the things and comforts they have here, the Sanctuary will always be a foreign place to Carl. His real home is with baby Lori in Alexandria.

So when Shane is gone, Carl hugs the walls of the factory, his fingers brushing against the handle of his knife, ready to unsheathe it and fight at every moment. It’s exhausting and he feels pulled taunt like a wire ready to be tripped. He tours the building to occupy his mind, making sure that his internal map of the place and of the guards' rotation is still exact. He uses his slender frame to sneak around and listen in. He’s been doing that for a while now, so much so that it’s almost as if he’s always been a part of the Sanctuary.

He knows the face of every worker on the factory floor, and the name and numbers of most of the people at the marketplace. He knows that Gary the Savior sometimes takes a break from his watch duty to go have a quick make-out session with the green-eyed girl working at the forge. He knows that Arat will sometimes take on the graveyard shift in exchange for good booze. He knows the previous occupation of each of Negan’s wives before the dead started rising. He knows that Tony and Ahmed always try to be assigned to the armory together because they both like to argue endlessly about the best rock bands from the 90s. He knows all about Dwight and Sherry’s previous escape attempt and the consequences that followed.

The only thing that’s still a mystery to him is Negan.

He knows that he used to live in the Sanctuary back when it was just a chemical factory with a lot of people inside. He knows that Simon helped him take leadership of the place. He knows that he’s sadistic and dramatic and that he’s built his own little corner of civilization on the edge of the apocalypse.

But he still doesn’t know who Negan used to be. Doesn’t know what’s the deal with the bat, or the whistling, or the kneeling, or the Saviors taking up his name.

He still doesn’t know shit and it drives him up the wall.

**

When Shane gets back from his last run, Carl catches him before he can follow the Saviors into the mess hall for the evening. They are unloading the last of the crates and one of them is full of whiskey – no doubt Spencer’s idea to soothe any ruffled feathers between Alexandria and Negan. Everyone is cheery at the idea of a night of drinking, and Carl has to jog to fall into stride with Shane.

“How was Alexandria?” he asks, because Shane has already been to Alexandria four times and still hasn’t bothered to tell Carl anything of substance.

“Fine,” Shane answers, distracted like the others.

“How was Lori? And Rosita and Sasha and the others?” he presses.

“Fine, I just told you. Everyone’s fine. Well, I mean I guess. Rosita wasn’t there. She said she was going pretty far out to find stuff and she hasn’t been back yet. I’ll see her next week.”

Carl frowns.

“Rosita is doing runs for the drop?”

Shane shrugs, as if there is nothing weird at all about Rosita switching from bloodthirsty for revenge to fully cooperating with the Saviors. Carl himself has a hard time believing that, but they are almost at the mess hall and his window of opportunity to get news from home is closing.

“What about Lori? Has she gotten bigger? Do they have all the supplies they need for her?”

“Carl,” Shane sighs, stopping in his stride to face him. “Listen to me. Lori’s fine. Alexandria is fine. There’s nothing for you to worry about, so relax, alright? Here, come with us, spend time with the guys. And gals,” he adds with a playful wink as Arat hits him in the shoulder in passing. His face is more serious when he turns back to Carl: “You’re gonna need these people to have your back out there. You wanna talk to them, get to know them. This ain’t different from my old unit back then. These people are your new family now, for better or for worse. You gotta make an effort.”

Carl bites the inside of his cheek.

“I will. Next time,” he says, but what he really thinks is that he doesn’t need to talk to any of them. He already knows almost everything about them.

Shane is obviously displeased, but raucous calls are coming from inside the hall, accompanied by the ringing sound of shot glasses being set down on the metal table.

“Alright. Stay outta trouble,” Shane says as he squeezes his shoulder in a paternal gesture.

Carl watches as Shane steps through the door, joining the banter inside, and clenches his fists as the door closes behind him, muffling the laughter. He can feel his blood pumping hot with frustration and anger, but there is nothing he can do. At least in Alexandria, he had some sway over Shane, who looked down on all the Alexandrians as if they were nothing more than headless sheep he had to herd back to safety. Big bad Shane who was always here to make the hard calls while everyone else prattled on endlessly about morals and doing what was right. But here, in the Sanctuary, Shane is right at home with the wolves. And suddenly Carl has turned into one of the sheep.

The feeling of someone at his back shakes him out of his bitter thoughts and his hand instinctively goes for the handle of his knife.

“You should listen to your dad, kid.”

Negan’s tone is its usual mix of teasing and condescending. Like every time he’s in the same room as Negan, Carl has to physically force himself to let go of his knife. It wouldn’t do him any good anyway. With a knife, he has to get close. All Negan has to do is swing his bat and he can knock someone out before they even get within arm’s length.

“He’s not my dad,” Carl spits, and immediately berates himself for how childish he sounds. He doesn’t know what it is in Negan that just makes him act like a petulant teenager.

“Oh, yeah? You wanna tell him that?”

Negan chuckles at his lack of answer and steps forward until he’s shoulder to shoulder with Carl, the both of them facing the closed door of the mess hall, like they are inside their own little bubble, separated from the rest of the Saviors.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. He’s right, you know? That sister of yours is perfectly safe in Alexandria. I know you and I didn’t get off on the greatest of start, what with me beating the living fuck out of your friends in that clearing, but you can trust me on this. We have a code. We don’t rape and we don’t let anything happen to kids.”

Carl scoffs and Negan turns his head toward him, eyes narrowed.

“What? You’ve seen anything here to make you believe otherwise? Do you see anyone going hungry? Any kid being abused or terrorized? No. Because we don’t do that kind of shit here. And honestly, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere that let that sort of shit fly. We save people. We saved your dad, and we saved your town, and we saved your sister, and we saved you. As long as I’m standing, nothing’s gonna happen to her. I can promise you that.”

He stays silent for a few moments, watching Carl pensively, letting his words sink in. He’s a dramatic asshole and God, Carl hates him with everything he has. He wants to talk back, say something snarky or clever or threatening. But that’s not who Carl is. He’s a foot soldier, like Shane. He’s good at following orders and doing grunt work. He’s not a leader like Hershel, or Maggie or Deanna.

Like Negan.

Once again, Negan’s lips stretch into a slow grin, like he’s been following every single one of Carl’s thoughts and he can see the exact moment Carl reaches the conclusion he's laid out for him. He bumps the head of his bat on top of Carl’s shoulder, right where Shane’s hand was a few moments ago, before walking away.

“And cheer the fuck up, kid. You’re depressing the hell out of me.”

**

“You ain’t a kid anymore, so stop acting like one,” Shane snarls. “You hear me, boy? It’s time to grow up! If you want to protect your mom, if you want to protect that baby inside her, you’ve got to grow up and be a _man_!”

“ _Shane!_ ”

His mom’s horrified scream does nothing to snap Shane out of his trance. He steps away from Carl, but he keeps pacing back and forth, a caged lion at the center of the lose circle the rest of them have formed around him: his mom, Glenn, Maggie, Hershel, Beth, T-Dog, Carol. All that’s left of them after the farm was stormed by walkers, after they lost Andrea and Dale.

They are two miles outside of Fort Benning, their only hope, now haunted by hundreds of walkers in military gear. They thought it would be a safe place, they thought they would find shelter for his mom, who is pregnant, and for them, to shield them from the upcoming winter. Instead, Fort Benning is a graveyard, with the dead roaming free outside of their tombs.

“What?” Shane spits. “Whattya lookin' at me like that for? Uh? You all know I’m right! This was our shot! Our only shot!”

“We’ll find another place, man,” Glenn says softly. They’ve all learned that it’s better not to confront Shane head on.

“Oh yeah? We’re gonna find another place? Easy as that, uh? Where, Glenn? Where the fuck do you want us to go?!” Shane roars.

“Shane, enough!”

“Shut up, Lori! Can’t you see I’m trying to keep you alive? Can’t you see I’m trying to keep you all alive?!”

“Yes, Shane,” Hershel intervenes, just a shadow of his old self. He’s lost his land, the ground where he had grown the roots that made him stand tall as an oak tree, impressive and fearsome to Carl’s young eyes. Now, he just looks like a frail old man. “We see that. And we trust you. We trust you will get us through this. Carl understands this too, don’t you, son?”

Carl doesn’t look up from the mossy ground at his feet, where Shane has knocked and trampled his sheriff’s hat. He wants to pick it up, but he knows that if he does, it will just make Shane’s temper worse. And these days, when Shane is angry, they are all afraid.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I understand.”

When they leave Fort Benning, Carl doesn’t look back toward his father’s hat, still laying flattened in the dirt.

**

“I hear you haven’t been eating.”

Carl frowns from where he’s been sitting on the metal steps of the parking lot, watching the morbid spectacle of walkers attached to the fences. He’s dreamed of his mother, and of Carol, of Maggie and Sophia, and spent all day in an exhausted daze, unable to fully shake himself awake. Now, in the quiet of the dusk, the evening breeze clearing away the scent of rotting walkers, he just wants to be by himself.

When it becomes clear that Negan isn’t going anywhere, he knows he has to answer.

“I eat,” he mumbles, staring resolutely ahead. He doesn’t want to give Negan the privilege of his attention.

“Cut the bullshit. I’m not talking about all the canned crap in your room. I mean the good shit from the market. No one’s seen you there.”

Carl hates the marketplace. Hates the way people there are designated by numbers. Hates the way they glare at him in contempt, resenting the fact that some kid gets to cut in line and eat all the fresh vegetables and expensive treats he wants while their own families have to make do with the “canned crap”. He avoids it like the plague. He’s got enough peanut butter, canned beans and instant noodles in his room to last him for months anyway.

Still, he can’t resist saying his piece.

“You mean the food that other people produce for you but can’t afford to eat themselves?”

It was supposed to be a sly barb but Negan just scoffs like Carl’s stupider than he thought:

“I’m sorry, kid, maybe you forgot how the world was back when you were still shitting in diapers, but that has literally always been how things work. Welcome to capitalism 101. Some people get a lot, some people get the scraps. Even when your mommy and daddy were taking you out for pancakes on Sunday, someone back in the kitchen was getting fucked in the ass by the minimum wage system. So don’t act like I’m the big bad guy here and just go eat something. You’re a Savior, you help keep this place safe. You’ve earned it. Now go take it.”

“I’m fine,” he grits.

An all-too familiar weight settles on Carl’s shoulder and he instantly straightens from his slouched position. He starts to turn his head toward Negan but has to stop when his hair starts getting tangled in the barbed points of the bat.

“Good, I have your attention. Now, I’m hungry so why don’t you got to the market and get me some stuff for a sandwich. I’m thinking ham, mustard and tomatoes on rye. Throw in a couple of pickles too. The good home-made shit from number 42’s stall.”

A _fuck off_ is so close from spilling out of Carl’s mouth that he has to physically bite his lips to restrain himself. Above him, Negan’s eyes are twinkling in amusement and he looks delighted by his indignation.

“Clock's tickin', kid. I’m getting hungry over here, and when I’m hungry, you can be sure that Lucille is too.”

He taps the bat on his shoulder for emphasis and, in spite of his efforts not to react, Carl can’t help but flinch.

Reluctantly, he gets to his feet and walks back inside the Sanctuary, Negan trailing lazily behind him.

When they get to the railing above the market place, one of the armed guards there whistles sharply and everyone immediately stops talking, turning toward them before kneeling as one. Negan looks about as happy as the cat who got the cream. Carl just wants the earth to swallow him whole.

He’s never liked being at the center of attention, too used to standing in Shane’s shadow. Now, in a place where everyone hates him for the privileges that come with being a Savior, he absolutely loathes it.

Negan, of course, finds a way to make it even worse.

“At ease,” he addresses the crowd below, no doubt feeling like a benevolent god talking to the masses and loving every minute of it. “Carl here is just gonna run a quick errand for me. Go on, kid. And don’t forget my pickles.”

Carl looks at Negan, torn between disbelief, anger and instinctive panic at being thrust under the spotlight. Negan holds his gaze, and the challenge there is evident. After a few seconds when all Carl can hear is the roaring of his blood rushing inside his skull, Negan loses his smirk and starts to look at Carl in a way that is truly terrifying. Like maybe Carl isn’t worth making fun of. Like maybe Carl isn’t worth being left alive at all.

Suddenly, Carl realizes that, no matter how much he hates Negan, living through this embarrassment is a far better alternative than whatever will happen if Negan loses his sadistic interest in teasing him.

So, his pulse skyrocketing, his heart beating strongly enough to crack his ribs from the inside, he slowly gets down the concrete stairs, each step like a gunshot in the complete silence of the hall. No one says a word around him, they are all waiting to see what he will do. Or more accurately, what Negan will do if Carl finds a way to fuck this up.

Feeling very much like the dead possums he and his friends used to poke with sticks on the side of road back in Georgia, Carl keeps moving forward. He may hate the market, but he’s still made a map of it in his head, like everywhere else in the Sanctuary. He’s spent entire afternoons after his morning watch just walking around, making himself as invisible as possible while he memorized every stall, though at the time he was trying to map the quickest way to grab supplies in case he and Shane needed to flee from the Sanctuary with bullets raining down on them. Still, he conjures up all the information he has saved in the back of his mind and makes a bee line for the bread, ham, mustard, tomatoes and pickles. People step out of his way, giving him a wide berth, staring at him and waiting for something to happen, for Carl to screw something up and for Negan to swoop down in a bloody rage. Maybe they dread the impending threat of violence. Maybe they're salivating for it. 

To make matter worse, Carl is halfway through the list of ingredients when Negan starts whistling a happy tune that sounds vaguely familiar, reminding Carl of hot hours spent playing with action figures on the backseat of his dad’s cruiser, the radio switching from one country song to the next. Here, on the huge factory floor, every note seems to bounce off the walls in an endless echo and Carl knows he can’t do anything but grit his teeth and bear the added humiliation. He has just enough pride left to stop himself from running toward the final ingredients before turning toward Negan, looking at him in a weak attempt at defiance.

Negan laughs fondly, a rough sound like sandpaper, before banging Lucille against the metal railing, making everyone jump.

“Back to work! Kid, to the mess hall. And don’t drop those pickles or I’ll have you licking the floor clean. I hate wasted resources.”

When the usual brouhaha of the market comes back to life around him, Carl is so relieved to be ignored again he feels prepared to handle whatever Negan might throw at him next.

Of course, this should be his first clue that he's about to get fucked.

When they get to the mess hall, Shane is there, playing cards with Arat, Gary, Dwight and Laura while other Saviors are lounging on couches or around the pool table. They all look at him in surprise, like he’s gotten lost on his way to the kids’ table at Thanksgiving.

“Attention!” Negan calls as he enters behind Carl, grinning widely as the soldiers scramble to kneel, dropping cards and pool cues in their haste.

“At ease,” he says after savoring the moment like the freaking narcissist that he is. “Carl here is just gonna make me a sandwich. Ain’t that right, kid?”

“Right,” Carl mumbles, glancing toward Shane who is frowning, his brown eyes darting between Carl and Negan confusedly.

 _It’s almost over_ , Carl reminds himself as he steps toward the counter, taking out one of the plates and table knives there. _Just a few more minutes and you’ll be done and Negan will go torment someone else. You can do this, just a few more minutes._

The short time he spends cutting the bread and piling on the condiments seems like the longest in his life, but when he’s finally done, pushing the plate toward Negan who has been watching him from the side, tapping the head of the bat on the ground in a mock military drumming, Carl feels lighter than a feather.

It was a hell of a bad moment, and now it's done. All it cost Carl was his pride and dignity, but he's made it out alive and with every single limb attached.

Yet, a gnawing sense of worry starts to fill him when Negan looks down at the plate and smiles like Carl is part of a joke and doesn’t know it yet.

“Awesome. Well, I got shit to do, so stay here and eat your sandwich, kid. And don’t forget your veggies.”

A few Saviors snicker, more to stay on Negan’s good side than because it’s a funny joke, but Carl doesn’t hear them. It’s like the room has been filled with white noise and his ears are ringing with the pure, complete, unfiltered rage that washes over him.

This time, there is no holding himself back.

 _“Fuck you_ ,” he spits, his hand shaking so hard he can’t even hope to get a handle of his knife.

Distantly, like through a fog, he hears Shane calling his name in warning but it’s like he’s got tunnel vision. All he can see is Negan, all amusement and teasing gone from his expression, replaced by a deadly seriousness. He sees him raising the bat in Shane’s direction, a clear command to stop whatever he was planning on doing, though his gray eyes don’t leave Carl for a moment.

“Excuse me?” Negan says very slowly.

It’s a warning, the biggest he’s ever given Carl. Lucille is still hanging horizontally in the air and all it would take is a flick of his wrist and Carl’s brains would get plastered all over the wall, too fast even for Shane to do anything about it.

He doesn’t need to look to know that, in his periphery, Shane is staring at him, telling him, ordering him silently to _stand down, just stand down, what the fuck are you doing, Carl._

But Carl is too far gone for that. He doesn’t know if it’s the emotional dream from last night, the pure exhaustion of trying to power through the day without crying for his mother like a baby, or the adrenaline still coursing through his veins from what happened at the market, but Carl doesn’t stand down. Instead he can feel his upper lip curling in a snarl.

“Fuck. You.” Every word is deliberate and for one single moment, Carl feels triumphant. Like he’s finally gotten one over Negan.

It lasts for just that, one single moment, before Negan takes a slow step toward him, moving the bat in an excruciatingly slow motion to rest on Carl’s shoulder. They are toes to toes now, Lucille resting between them and Carl has to look up to keep looking Negan in the eyes.

“I think what you mean is ‘thank you’,” Negan says quietly, his breath smelling of peppermint and something slightly sour against Carl’s face. “‘Thank you, Negan, for calling me out on my _bullshit_ and giving me the opportunity to start acting like a man instead of a fucking spoiled _brat_.’” His voice picks up in volume steadily, until he’s nearly shouting, making Carl flinch. From the bare inches separating them, Carl can hear the crinkling of his leather glove tightening around the handle of the bat and there is an angry vein throbbing above the collar of his leather jacket, right in front of Carl’s eyes.

For the first time since he’s arrived at the Sanctuary, Carl is finally witnessing what Negan looks like when he’s angry. He immediately realizes what a fucking idiot he was to think he could handle it.

After that, there is nothing else for him to do but swallow his pride, lower his gaze and diligently repeat:

“Thank you.”

It’s a whisper, but in the utter silence of the room, everyone can hear him perfectly.

Negan doesn’t move from where he’s towering over Carl and, for a split second, the bat presses more forcefully against his shoulder, the points of the barbed wire scraping painfully against his collarbone, and the terrible realization that it’s too late, that Negan is going to do the same thing to him that he did to Glenn and Abraham, starts dawning on him.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the bat is lifted from his shoulder and Negan takes a step back, answering him good-naturedly.

“You’re welcome, kid.”

**

“What the hell was that?”

Carl barely hears Shane’s furious growl.

He feels like he’s underwater, all the adrenaline that was pumping inside him has finally stopped and though he’s never taken any drug, he’d say it’s probably what coming down from a high feels like. He’s exhausted, his shoulder is sore, his shirt frayed where Lucille was a moment ago, and all he longs for now is to be alone in a dark room so he can process what happened.

Negan had turned around without another glance, barking orders until Carl and Shane were the only ones left in the mess hall. The sandwich is still on the counter, untouched.

Shane grips him by the arm and shakes him:

“I said, what the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” Carl mumbles, no energy left in him for a fight.

“You don’t – Jesus, Carl. You can’t pull that kind of shit! What did I tell you, uh? What did I tell you?”

“To keep my head down.”

“That’s right! So what the hell do you think you're doing? Jesus Christ.”

Shane lets go of him and rubs his eyes, the very image of paternal frustration in front of Carl’s own teenage disobedience. Carl wonders if he’s about to get an earful about endangering their position here, about endangering Lori back in Alexandria – Shane’s preferred method to make Carl feel like shit – but he just lets out a big sigh, like he's also too exhausted for a fight.

“Look, son, you gotta… you gotta be smarter than that. This, this place, it’s our home now. We’re in this for the long haul and I’m not always gonna be around to keep you safe. So you can’t do shit like that. You gotta be smart, Carl. Alright? You gotta be smart.”

Carl blinks, unused to Shane’s attempt at paternal wisdom. Usually, Shane gets his point across through threats and warnings, not… whatever this is. It takes Carl entirely by surprise and feels like the cherry on top of an already surreal day.

“Alright,” he answers, because he’s not sure what else to say.

**

The next day, Shane leaves for his weekly run to Alexandria. Carl is already awake, ready to take up his watch shift along the western entrance. They’ve spent the night before in a tense silence, both visibly on edge but reluctant to say anything that might develop into a full blown shouting match. Idly, Carl wonders if Shane has felt it too, that split second when it seemed like Negan was actually going to take a swing at Carl’s head. Did he feel as scared as Carl? Did he remember the promise he’d made Lori, to always watch over Carl? Did he realize that he was about to watch that promise get broken right in front of him?

Shane doesn’t say anything as he ties his boots, but before stepping through the door, he turns back to Carl:

“I’ll say hi to baby Lori for you, okay?”

It’s as much a peace offering as Shane’s capable of, so Carl just nods and thanks him. Shane nods back, looking as uncomfortable as Carl is feeling.

“Alright, be good. Keep your –”

“Keep my head down, I know.”

Shane nods one final time and closes the door behind him.

The rest of the day goes by quickly and quietly. Carl keeps watch in the morning and then spends the afternoon on the roof, alone with his thoughts and the heavy realization that, like Shane said, he’s in this for the long haul. There is no leaving the Sanctuary. He might be here for years. Perhaps forever.

The Sanctuary isn’t like the prison, or even like Alexandria. It’s not just protected by walls. Carl doesn’t know all the details yet but he knows the Saviors have dozens of outposts throughout the region. They can see everything coming their way in all direction, whether it be men or herds. It’s slightly terrifying to start thinking in terms of “years” and “forever” after spending half of his life running from one safe place to the next, never knowing exactly when they would need to grab their bags and leave.

At dusk, he sees Shane, Negan and the other Saviors coming back to the compound, probably with more gifts from Spencer in their trucks. He still has a good hour until his night shift starts so he stays on the roof, the skin of his arms turning into goosebumps from the cold night breeze.

When there is only a handful of minutes left before the watch rotation, he gets to his feet and starts getting down the dozens of staircases leading to the ground floor. He’s just about to turn left to get a rifle from the armory for his shift, when he notices that he hasn’t seen Jed or Pete at their posts on the southern entrance. It’s not uncommon for people standing guard to sometime leave their posts out of boredom and go have a chat and a smoke somewhere else, but they aren’t stupid enough to pull that kind of shit when Negan is around, and they usually wait until he’s out to desert their post.

With a nagging feeling at the back of his mind, Carl decides to turn right instead of going to the armory. At first, nothing seems out of the ordinary, the hallway is deserted and the steel door is bolted. The only thing missing is Pete standing guard in front of it.

Just to make sure, Carl decides to go check outside if maybe Pete’s decided to grab an early smoke before the watch rotation, but before reaching for the door handle, he sees that the closet door on his left is slightly ajar, like someone was in a hurry and didn’t close it all the way.

He knows what’s waiting for him before he even pushes it open and, just as expected, Jed is dead, his throat slit and his body shoved hastily in the closet where they keep the cleaning supplies.

Someone’s inside the Sanctuary, and they’re taking advantage of the short window before the watch rotation to sneak around.

Whoever they are, they’re smart, Carl thinks as he stabs Jed in the head. _So you gotta be smarter_ , Shane’s voice whispers inside his mind.

He heard Tony and Ahmed arguing about Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots on his way to the armory, so whoever is here, they’re not going for the guns. Which means that they can only be here for Negan. And Negan is probably with Shane in the mess hall after the drop from Alexandria.

Carl bolts.

Jed’s body was still warm so whoever it is that’s killing their way into the Sanctuary, they don’t have much of a head start. He pulls the internal map he’s made of the Sanctuary and figures out that his best shot is to go to the forge, where Jimmy keeps a handgun behind the wheelbarrows full of scrap metal waiting to be melted. From there, he can try to cut them off, whoever they are, before they reach the mess hall.

Carl runs, ignoring other people on their way to the night watch who shout questions about what’s happening and where he is running to. He knocks over several wheelbarrows on his way to get the gun and the workers who are on their way out hurl insults at him. He runs around corridor B and notices that Penny and Connor are also missing from their posts at the intersections of corridors A and D. He grits his teeth, tries to shake the horrible feeling that he might be too late, that Shane might have been caught by surprise, and almost runs into someone as he turns around the corner of corridor C, the one leading to the mess hall.

That someone, it turns out, is Negan.

“What the shit, kid?” he exclaims, grabbing Carl by the arm to keep them both upright.

Then, his eyes go down and he sees the gun in Carl’s hand. The gun he’s not allowed to have outside of his watch duty.

Distantly, Carl registers the way Negan’s expression grows cold, fuming, _betrayed_ , like Carl just broke his trust and now there’s going to be hell to pay.

 _It’s not me who’s trying to kill you_ , he wants to say, but he can’t, because at the exact same moment Rosita turns around the corner, a bloody knife in one hand, a gun raised in the other, aimed and ready to fire.

Carl doesn’t think. He lunges.

**

“You’re gonna beat this world, you hear me?” His mom says, her bangs clinging to her sweaty forehead in wet strands. “You’re gonna survive and beat this world.”

**

The gunshot echoes inside his skull, making his ears ring so intensely that he loses focus. There is a split second when Carl doesn’t know where he is, or even who he is. He thinks he can hear footsteps and shouting, other Saviors attracted to the sound of a gun being fire. But everything is muffled and there is a piercing sound drilling into his ears, like he just busted an eardrum.

As he turns toward Negan, who is on the ground, looking at him in complete shock, it suddenly comes rushing back.

Rosita. The gun.

When he finds his way back into his own body, he barely notices that he’s the one lying on the ground now, looking up at the ceiling. There are voices and shadows rushing around him, but it feels as if he is disconnected from them. Separated by a dark red veil, like the color of his favorite Christmas ornament back when he was a kid. A candy cane with dark red stripes like sparkly ribbons. His dad would always lift him in his arms so that he could hang it near the top of the tree.

“Dad...” he whispers as shadows keep moving above him.

“Holy shit, kid. You’re still _alive_?!”

That’s not his dad’s voice, Carl realizes confusedly. Not Shane’s voice either. He needs to find Shane. Where is he? Did he leave? Did he take baby Lori and leave like he always threatened to?

“No,” he tries to say, but it feels like his tongue weighs a hundred pound inside his mouth. Even keeping his eyes open is starting to be unbearable. There is a dull pain throbbing in the right side of his face, and a sense of panic keeps pulling at the corner of his mind, though he can’t remember what that’s about.

“Shhh, kid,” says the voice above him. “Don’t talk. Jesus fucking Christ, I can’t believe you’re still fucking alive.” Then, the voice starts booming furiously: “What are you all doing with your dicks hanging out? Get that murderous bitch in a cell and tell the doc we’re coming _right the fuck now!_ ”

As if through a dark red fog, Carl registers that he is being lifted into the air, and he is further reminded of Christmas Eves spent by the tree, waiting to catch Santa Claus before his dad would carry him to bed. Distantly, he hears the voice panting urgently above him.

“Hang on, kid. We’re almost there, just hang on.”

**

"You are smart, and you are strong and you are so brave,” his mom gasps, her hand squeezing his like a vice. “And I love you. You gotta do what's right. Promise me you'll always do what's right. It's so easy to do the wrong thing in this world, so if it feels wrong, don't do it, if it feels easy, don't do it, don't let the world spoil you."

**

When Carl wakes up, he’s reminded of his arrival at the Greene farm, waking up in a strange bed with his mom and Shane asleep, their heads resting on the mattress by his side, a piercing pain shooting through his stomach. He learned that day what being shot felt like. So when he regains consciousness, Carl immediately knows he got shot again.

“Good, you’re awake,” a vaguely familiar voice calls and Carl tries to open his eyes but there is a bandage on the right side of his face. He feels dizzy and nauseous.

“Do you remember me? I’m Dr. Emmett Carson. I set your shoulder back in place a few weeks ago.”

Carl tries to focus his blurry vision on the willowy silhouette of the doctor, but Carson flashes a light in front of his left eye and he hisses in pain, completely blinded. He raises his hand to the bandages on his face, trying to take stock of whatever damage happened underneath, but Carson takes his arm and puts it flat on the bed, rearranging the IV Carl just notices is poking out of the crease of his elbow.

“Don’t move. You’ve got a lot going on there. I gave you pain killers and antibiotics and anti-inflammatory.”

“Where am I?” he tries to ask but his throat is parched and his mouth feels heavy and gummy.

Carson brings him a cup of water with a straw that he guides toward Carl’s mouth, letting him take a few sips.

“In the infirmary. You got shot in the face. I’ve got to say, I haven’t seen injuries like that since my days in Doctors Without Borders. The bullet went right into your orbital bone, crushed everything there, but it stopped before going any further. That’s some luck of the Irish you’ve got right there. Not many people can take a bullet in the skull and still live to tell the tale.”

Carl frowns, trying to follow what’s being said to him.

“My eye…”

“It’s gone, I’m afraid,” Carson says while checking Carl’s IV. “There was nothing left to save anyway. I’ve done what I can but cosmetic surgery isn’t my specialty so I’m sorry to say it’s not going to be pretty. But you’re alive and that’s what matters, isn’t it?”

 _I lost an eye_ , Carl thinks, incredulously, unable to completely grasp the sheer meaning of this. _I lost an eye. How am I gonna see properly? How am I gonna shoot a gun?_

Suddenly, the image of Rosita, her own gun ready to shoot, appears at the forefront of his mind.

“Rosita, where’s –”

“It was smart what you did,” Carson interrupts him, turning away to riffle through a drawer. “You saved his life. I’m guessing you’re going to get a big reward for that.”

 _A reward_ , Carl thinks _. I just lost an eye_. What fucking reward is worth that?

“I’ve gotta see her, Rosita. I’ve gotta talk to her.”

"You’re not going anywhere for a long time,” Carson smiles, filling a needle with something from a vial and adding it to his IV. “You have to sleep. Negan will want to talk to you after you've rested.”

 _But he’s gonna kill Rosita_ , Carl wants to protest, but whatever was in that syringe is a hell of lot stronger than anything Hershel ever gave him back in the day, because everything goes dark in an instant.

**

“Look at it,” Shane says, uncharacteristically calm. His hand is squeezing the nape of Carl’s neck in an inescapable grip, pushing his face downward until Carl's arms start to shake from where he is kneeling in the dirt. “You can’t be afraid of them. You hear me? You can’t be afraid of them. So you look that thing in the eye until it stops being scary, you hear me?”

Carl doesn’t answer, he can’t talk, can’t think. It takes all the strength he has to push back against Shane’s hand, to keep himself on all fours. Right below him is the severed head of a walker, its eyes still rolling and its teeth snapping, hungry moans coming out of its lipsless mouth.

They are outside the prison. Officially, to see if their traps have caught anything that the walkers haven’t eaten yet. But this is the third time that Shane’s done that. Every time he pushes Carl closer. The first time, he’d just stood aside while a walker advanced toward Carl, his arms crossed over his chest.

“You’re on your own now, boy. It’s just you and that thing.”

The second time, he’d taken Carl’s gun and knife.

“You’ve gotta use what’s around you, boy. What, you think you’re always gonna have weapons lying around?”

But this time, this time Shane took out the walker himself, decapitated it in one clean swoop of his machete. And now here they are, Carl on the ground, his face only a few inches away from the walker’s head, Shane pushing him downward relentlessly.

“I said look at it. That’s death right there, son. And it’s coming for you. It’s coming for your sister. It already got your mom, and now it’s coming to finish the job. It’s coming for baby Lori, Carl. So what do you do, uh? _What do you do, boy?!_ ”

**

Carl doesn’t know if he’s lost consciousness or if he’s slept. He could have been out for hours even though it feels like only a few minutes. All he knows is that when he opens his eyes – eye – again, Negan is sitting by his bed, leather jacket draped over the back of a chair, his elbows resting on his open knees, the handle of Lucille against his thigh. He looks up with a tired smile when he hears Carl shifting awake.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, kid. Well… mostly.”

His joke falls flat without his manic smile to carry it. Instead, he looks worn out and vulnerable in a simple white shirt, his tattoos displayed on his surprisingly thin and wiry arms, a few strands of his hair falling loose over his forehead.

Carl’s throat is parched and his head is still spinning from the painkillers. He would kill for a glass of water. Instead, he asks:

“What happened?”

Negan falls back in his seat and chuckles incredulously.

“What happened? Well, kid, let me tell you what happened. A one-woman army sneaked through the fence, killed four of my guys, walked right through the front door like we’re at a goddamn barbecue, and she was about to shoot me down like a dog with some sort of homemade, hillbilly bullet when you…”

His voice trails, and he bites his lower lip while looking at Carl intently, like he’s a problem he just can’t figure out.

“Damn kid, you just pushed me out of the way like some Superman. Just like that, _BAM,_ here I am, flat on my ass, trying to figure out what the shit just happened and I look up, and I see you looking back at me with a goddamn hole in your face. You saved my life, kid. That’s what happened.”

Negan looks away for a second, like he’s watching it happen all over again, before shaking his head ruefully.

“So I gotta ask, kid. Why in the hell did you do that? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am _very_ grateful. But I have to admit, if I had to pick which one of my men would be willing to take a bullet for me, you wouldn’t have made top of my list. Your dad – step-dad or whatever –, he’s made well for himself at the Sanctuary. Hell, give it a couple of years and I might make him one of my top lieutenants. Give him an outpost of his own. But you, you keep sulking around, looking at me and everyone else here like we took a big, collective dump into your cereals. I certainly didn’t think you gave enough of a fuck to piss on me if I was on fire, let alone _get shot_ for me. So… why did you do it?”

Honestly, Carl has absolutely no idea. Thinking back on what happened, all he can remember is the moment he saw Rosita turn around the corner, with her gun raised. After that, it’s entirely clear and completely blurry at the same time. He can remember the feeling of absolute certainty that filled him when he pushed Negan out of the way, the unshakable faith that what he was doing was right. But as to _why_ he felt that way… He couldn’t possibly say.

Distantly, he remembers his mother’s final words.

_You gotta do what's right._

_Promise me you'll always do what's right._

Negan is still looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer, so Carl just gives him one:

“Unlike you, I don’t enjoy watching people die.”

The bitter jab falls just as flat as Negan’s joke earlier.

“So that’s it, then, uh? It was just a good Samaritan kind of deal? You would have done the same for any man or woman here?”

Carl tries to image it. Tries to imagine the bullet going for Arat or Laura or Gary, or any of the other Savior or worker living inside the Sanctuary. Negan smiles at his lack of answer.

“Well shit, kid. Don’t you know how to make a guy feel special.”

“Shut up,” Carl mutters, feeling his cheeks overheating, probably another side effect of the painkillers.

“I gotta say, I knew _you_ were special from the start. Kids your age, in a world like this, they are either scared shitless of their own shadows or they turn into full-blown sadistic ghouls, killing everything that moves just because they can. But not you. You, you know what’s at stakes. You’ve killed and you don’t shy away from it. You don’t enjoy it either, but you get the job done because you know that sometimes, in order to save people, you gotta kill people. And I respect the shit out of that.”

He scratches his beard while looking at Carl pensively.

“Your step-dad is lucky to have you, kid. This whole place is lucky to have you. ‘Cause you may think that I’m bad, but let me tell you: if I wasn’t here to run the show, you’d know what bad really is. This place is a fucking zoo and I’m the one keeping all the animals fed and locked up. The minute I stop being in charge, everything here falls apart and it goes back to being a goddamn free-for-all. And I mean it literally. People will be slaughtering each other in the blink of an eye without daddy here to keep the peace. So you didn’t just save my life, kid. You saved the life of every single person here as well. Remember that.”

As he prepares to leave, gathering his bat and his jacket lazily, Carl realizes that it’s his last chance to ask the question he’s been dreading:

“Where’s Rosita?”

“In a cell.”

“Is she alive?” he persists.

Negan raises a playful eyebrow as he hooks his jacket over his shoulder.

“For now. She seemed pretty shaken up about popping your eye like a balloon at the fair, so I’m letting her cool down for a few days. She’s getting food and water.”

Carl should stop there. He doesn’t want to press his luck, and he certainly doesn’t want to plant anything in Negan’s head that’s not already there. Still, he has to ask:

“Are you going to kill her?”

“She killed four of my men and tried to kill me, kid. Not only that, she almost killed you too, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re still mine.”

He seemed to consider something, eyeing Carl critically before adding:

“Still, I now have four job openings. Five, if I count the time you’re gonna spend recovering. I’ll offer her to fill one out. Get her the same deal I gave you and Shane. She becomes one of us, all is forgiven.”

“She’ll never go for it,” Carl warns. He knows how headstrong Rosita, how devastated she was after what happened to Abraham. How much she loathes Negan and the Saviors.

Negan shrugs as he walks out the door.

“Then she’ll die. Like I said, I don’t let people fuck with what’s mine.”

_To be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already have the skeleton of chapter 3 laid out, so I just need to put some flesh around it (get it, it's a TWD pun ;D). Hopefully I'll be able to post it before the end of February.


	3. Wives and candy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carl meets the wives. Negan makes a point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know that this was supposed to only be 3 chapters long, but when I started integrating Sherry and flashbacks about Jessie, I realized this was getting far too long so I cut the ending in two. Final (for real!) chapter sometimes next month, probably.

When Carl opens his eyes – eye – again, he is faced with a strange woman in a black dress sitting on the chair where Negan was a few moments – hours? – ago. He blinks, waiting for something to happen, though he’s not sure what. They’re alone in the infirmary, and the dark-haired woman is reading a book, ignoring him completely. On the nightstand, next to the vial that Dr. Carson has been regularly pumping into his IV and which keeps knocking him out no matter how much he tries to stay awake, there are two chocolate bars and a can of cherry-flavored soda, all of them untouched.

Carl waits a few more seconds but it becomes clear that no one else is coming, it’s just him and that woman in the infirmary, and she’s still reading her book in silence.

Slowly, painfully, he pushes himself upright, swallowing the painful moans that threaten to pass his lips when he lifts his head. The woman finally raises her eyes from her book and she looks slightly exasperated at seeing him conscious.

“Hi,” he tries anyway, because he knows he’s supposed to be polite to women, something his parents always insisted on while they drank iced tea after church services and during neighborhood barbecues. Even Shane would cuff the back of his head whenever they crossed path with Jessie in Alexandria and Carl failed to display good manners.

The woman’s lips are curved resolutely downward and she seems to consider just ignoring him before finally giving him the smallest of nod. He waits a few more seconds, but she doesn’t say anything and, when he sees that she’s about to go back to her reading, he asks tentatively:

“Can I help you?”

She snorts.

“Definitely not.”

Now, Carl can feel himself getting pissed off, still dizzy from painkillers and the fact that he was just shot in the face. At least Shane isn’t here to cuff the back of his head when his tone grows curter:

“So what are you doing here?”

“Negan’s orders.”

This takes him completely by surprise.

“Why?”

She shrugs, but when she finally gives him more than two words, she sounds annoyed, if not resentful.

“He said we have to keep you company. He doesn’t want you to be alone. Or bored. So here we are, sitting by your bed all day, just waiting to entertain you.”

 _Who’s we?_ He wants to ask, because there is no one else with them, but that’s when he finally puts two and two together. The black dress, the high heels, the neatly done hair and nails, the slightly floral perfume that tickles his nose.

“You’re one of Negan’s wives.”

She snorts again, clearly unimpressed with him stating the obvious, but Carl ignores it. He’s trying to remember her name and it’s difficult with the haze that clings to his mind. Just focusing is enough to make him nauseous and even before getting shot he never paid too much attention to the wives. He’d learned what he could about them, just as he had with everyone else in the Sanctuary, but he’d never pushed it past names and previous occupations. The role they play for Negan makes him uncomfortable, like something deeply private that should be kept secret instead of being paraded around for everyone to see. Carl isn’t stupid, and he isn’t ignorant. He knows what sex and love are. He’s seen it with his mom and Shane in the beginning, and he’s spent half of his adolescent life with Glenn and Maggie, and not so long ago, he saw Shane trying to put on his best face for Jessie, back in Alexandria. But Negan doesn’t act with his wives the way Glenn or Shane looked at women like his mom, or Maggie or Jessie. It isn’t love, it’s possessiveness, and probably something more physical that Carl just avoids thinking about.

“You’re Tanya,” he finally remembers. Tanya, who came from Pennsylvania and who used to be a chef and who makes cardamom and acorn gelato for the Saviors on special occasions when Negan requests it.

“And you’re the dumbass who saved Negan’s life,” she shoots back, though he doesn’t miss the way she glances at the closed door of the infirmary, making sure that no one else can hear. Then, as if unable to hold back anymore, she scoots her chair closer to the bed, and the ear-splitting scraping is enough to knock Carl back down onto his pillows.

“All you had to do was stand aside,” Tanya says, leaning closer to Carl. “Not even. All you had to do was _nothing_. Nothing and it would have all been over. Don’t you know what kind of monster he is? After what he did to your friends? Why would you want to save his life after that?”

It’s almost fortuitous that Carl is in so much pain that he’s unable to lift his head, let alone reply, because he has no answer to give her. He couldn’t say why he pushed Negan aside, especially not after wanting revenge himself. But wanting revenge and actually getting it are two different things. Carl knows that he isn’t like Shane, like Negan or Abraham. Violence doesn’t come naturally to him. Shane just made sure that it came more easily, chipping away at Carl’s natural abhorrence for it little by little over the years. But deep down, underneath the trauma and the numbness and the anger, he’s still his mother’s son.

_Promise me you'll always do what's right._

Maybe it wasn’t right to save Negan’s from a death that he deserves a hundred times over. Maybe it wasn’t right to Glenn’s and Abraham’s memory, to Maggie and to all the people that Negan will no doubt keep hurting in the future.

But in that single second, when Negan was holding onto Carl’s arm, looking him in the eyes, his face so betrayed and wrathful… It felt right.

“Shit,” he hears her muttering. “Shit, are you gonna pass out?”

He hears another strident sound of the metal chair scraping against the concrete floor and he only just now notices that his eye is closed and his breath is coming out in pants, his heart thumping madly in his chest and a cold sweat rolling in beads off his temple and along his neck. It does seem like he’s close to passing out.

Distantly, he hears a door opening and two pairs of footsteps rushing toward him.

“How long has he been like that?” Dr. Carson barks.

“I don’t know, just a couple of seconds.”

“Negan won’t be happy. I told him he was well enough to see his father later today. He won’t like it if I tell him I was wrong. And don’t think I won’t tell him it was you who caused this!”

“Me? I didn’t do anything! He was barely awake for a few minutes!”

“Yeah, well, someone has to take the blame, and you can be sure it won’t be me. Jesus… I’ll give him another sedative; let’s hope it will be enough.”

**

Carl remembers Jessie.

More accurately, he remembers how much Jessie reminded him of his mom, with her baggy jeans and her plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled up her pale arms. The way the light would catch in her hair whenever she tucked a strand behind her ear. Her kind smile when she greeted everyone on the street.

He knows he wasn’t the only one to see a resemblance.

He remembers the way Shane would look at her. When they arrived in Alexandria, he looked down on everyone there, smirking, confident that he knew better than them and that they would have to see things his way eventually. _And if they don’t, we’ll just take this place from them._

But Shane didn’t look at Jessie like that. He looked at her like she confused him, like she was a problem he just couldn’t figure out.

Jessie’s husband, though, Shane knew exactly how to figure him out.

**

“I’m gonna kill her,” Shane says calmly, decisively, a promise set in stone. He straightens, his hand on the gun strapped to his hip.

It’s the evening now. From what Carson told him, once he’d stopped pumping Carl full of sedatives, it’s been three days since Rosita shot him. When he’d woken up, slightly less groggy and disoriented than the previous times, another one of Negan’s wives was sitting by his side – a red-haired, Frankie, former physical therapist from L.A. – and though she glared at him disapprovingly, she didn’t say anything, simply got up and told Dr. Carson that he was awake. Carson himself had obviously been relieved to see Carl conscious and he’d started checking his IV, pulse and pupil response agitatedly. His pale skin and hair, coupled with his anxious and yet still uptight expression, reminded Carl strongly of the greyhound that their neighbor, Mrs. Kraschenvsky, had back in Georgia – a nervous little thing that would sniff around the neighborhood with its tail and ears hanging low, always ready to bolt at the slightest sound. After examining him, Carson deemed him fit to receive prolonged visitors, though he coaxed him into eating one of the candy bars on his nightstand first. There were more of them now, two Reese’s peanut butter cups having been added to the mix, as well as an Almond Joy. The can of cherry coke had also been replaced with an orange soda, still slightly chilled from the fridge.

“Negan’s been sending someone to replace them,” Carson said, which made Carl stop mid-bite.

He looked down to the candy bar in his hand. Though he’d heard Carson perfectly, the image of Negan doing something as mundane as sending Carl snacks seemed so absurd that he could hardly believe it.

“What?”

Carson was back to riffling through drawers of medical supplies, so Carl looked at Frankie who just shrugged. Carson finally turned and, seeing that Carl had stopped eating, chided him:

“Keep going. The soda too. The sugar will do you some good until you’re well enough for proper food. They’ll be here soon and you don’t want to pass out again.”

So here they are now, Carl on the bed, feeling slightly invigorated in spite of the dull pain that keeps shooting through the right side of his face, Frankie and Carson standing aside along with Dwight, Negan's armed escort for the day, while Negan and Shane face the bed. Carl wishes he could talk; he wants to know about Rosita, wants to ask if she’s still alive, if she knows that _he_ is still alive. He wants to ask Shane if anything happened while he was out, if Negan’s planning retaliation against Alexandria. Hell, at this point, he’s been kept in the dark so much that just knowing why Negan insists on him being surrounded at all times by wives and candy would already be something. But of course, no one’s asking him anything. Shane entered the room, took one good look at his weakened form and bandaged face, and that was it. Carl knows the signs and they are all here, like sirens going off at the back off his mind: the way Shane’s standing, slightly hunched forward, like an animal about to spring and pounce, his closed fists, his twitching eyelid, his clenched jaw, the vein throbbing at his temple. That’s Shane ready to spill blood.

“Alright, slow down your roll, cowboy.”

Negan’s lazy drawl cuts through Shane’s thin composure like a knife, letting all the rage and hunger for violence pouring out. Suddenly, all of his restraint is gone and he storms toward Negan until they are toe to toe:

“She shot _my son_!”

His furious cry booms and echoes around the infirmary and seems to reverberate inside every corner of Carl’s skull, rattling everything and making him wince, which triggers a cascade of pain throughout the right side of his face.

 _She wasn’t aiming for me_ , he thinks bitterly once the pain starts to recede and he can form coherent thoughts once more.

If Negan is pissed or surprised at Shane for standing up to him, snarling and roaring like a wild animal that just burst out of its cage, he doesn’t show any sign of it. Instead, he looks almost pleased. As if he’s been waiting for this moment, and he probably has. Carl’s been in the infirmary for three days and Shane’s only been allowed to see him now, once Negan’s decided it. They’ve been here long enough for everyone to know Shane’s temper by now, they know that he’s always a hair trigger away from setting off like a bomb, taking everything down around him. It’s what made it so easy for him to fit in Sanctuary, to get everyone’s respect so quickly. Negan and his men value brutality, they respect it, crave it, and no one knows how to do it quite like Shane.

Carl has seen several sides of Negan in the weeks they’ve spent at Sanctuary: some of them are clear as day for anyone to see, like the fact that he’s a monster, exceptional in his cruelty and taste for the dramatic; others are more complicated, like the way he talked to Carl yesterday, open and sincere, without any joke or banter, almost vulnerable in the way he wondered why Carl would save his life. But one thing is absolutely undeniable: Negan’s not an idiot, and he must have anticipated Shane’s reaction to seeing Carl like that, disabled and disfigured. Now, Negan looks ready to drill down a long-awaited lesson into him.

Slowly, carefully, he lifts Lucille from his shoulder and presses it to Shane’s torso, pushing him a few steps back, but still keeping him at arm’s length. A warning and a threat. Carl watches, tense, but also slightly fascinated to not be the one on the other end of that bat for once.

“Let me remind you of something, Shane,” Negan smiles, his tone almost neighborly. “That badass, big-sacked, brave as fuck kid,” and here Negan points Lucille in Carl’s direction, “he belongs to me. You,” the bat swings back to Shane and taps him in the chest for emphasis, “you belong to me. _Everyone here_ belongs to me. And that murderously efficient, cold-hearted, fine as hell piece of ass downstairs? She also belongs to me. People are a resource. And I’ll be damned if I let you waste one goddamn useful resource just because… because what? Because the kid lost an _eye_?”

He chuckles incredulously, which only makes Shane vibrate with barely contained anger.

“I mean, is that what’s got your panties all in a twist? Who the fuck cares? Hell, after what he did for me, I’ll give Carl his own freaking machine gun. He won’t even have to aim, he can just press the trigger and mow down whatever or whoever stands in the way. He’ll be alright. And you,” Negan presses Lucille more firmly into the center of Shane’s torso, making him step back some more. “You will keep doing your job. You will keep making sure that Alexandria toes the line and delivers shit for me. Or I can assure you, that chick downstairs will be the least of your worries.”

Shane and Negan stare at each other for a handful of seconds that seem to stretch like eternity and from the corner of his good eye, Carl can see that Dwight’s got his hand on his hip, ready to draw his gun.

Ultimately, things reach their unavoidable conclusion: Shane stands down, shaking his head like an overheated horse that’s been forbidden from racing. He looks at Carl and it’s a strange look – so strange that Carl can’t even begin to describe it – before turning and leaving the infirmary without another word.

As the door closes behind him, Negan whistles behind his teeth.

“Jeez, that guy must have been a riot at birthday parties.”

Distantly, Carl registers Negan saying something else and Frankie, Carson and Dwight leave the room as well, until it’s just him and Negan. But he barely pays attention to it because his mind is focused on something else. He realizes that the look that Shane gave him, that strange, unusual look he’s never seen him wear before, that was pity. Pity for Carl. Carl who Shane had spent the past four years training to be a soldier, a fighter, a survivor, a protector for his little sister. Carl who’s now crippled, half blind and unable to properly aim a gun ever again.

Something dark and painful twists the inside of his stomach, clenching at his heart and compressing his chest, and Carl suddenly longs for the comforting embrace of Carson’s sedatives.

Negan’s cheerful voice brings him back to the present moment:

“So how are the wives treating you? Nothing like a conversation with a beautiful woman to make you feel in tip top shape. Granted, my first instinct would have been to get you some books, maybe one or two Playboy magazines, give you something to occupy the time here, but…”

Negan makes a gesture, shielding the right side of his face with a gloved hand. Carl wishes he could ignore it, ignore him, but the whirlwind of shame and humiliation that takes over him is unlike any reaction that Negan’s teasing has ever elicited before. He’s lost an eye, and from the quick glance he’s stolen in the mirror of the medicine cabinets while waiting for Dr. Carson to apply fresh bandages, he’s lost part of his face as well. He’s never felt vain before, never had any reason to, but now, with a red, gaping hole glaring back at him, he’s shaken by the magnitude of the fact that he’s disfigured for life. Negan’s joke feels too much like salt on a – literally – open wound.

At least part of these dark musings must be visible, because Negan clicks his tongue disapprovingly:

“And here I thought that saving my life might sweeten you up. But no, you’re still giving me that goddamn stink eye, like I just kicked your puppy. Unbelievable. In fact, you know what? I think that glare is made worse by the fact that you’ve only got the one eyeball now.”

Carl can feel his blood boiling inside his veins but it’s a good feeling, the first good feeling he’s had since he woke up in the infirmary. Anger he knows. Anger he can deal with. Compared to Shane’s pity and his own disfigured reflection, anger is a friend that he welcomes with open arms, and he instinctively searches for the tray where Carson has left the pair of sharp surgical scissors he used to change Carl’s bandages. Negan follows his gaze and his taunting smile withers into a faint whisper of something that Carl can only describe as fond.

“Damn,” he whispers. “Look at you. Half-dead, pumped full of drugs, half of your face missing, and still, you’re thinking about taking a shot at me. I gotta say, kid, I don’t know if I’m scared or turned on by those big balls of yours. Probably a lil’ bit of both,” he winks.

Carl wishes his compliments would stop lighting a flicker of pride inside his chest. They are condescending at best, humiliating at worst. And yet, he still feels it, that glowing ember of warmth that fills him whenever Negan praises him.

He tries to hide it, to scowl, but as always, it’s like Negan can read his mind because he just chuckles before resting Lucille on his shoulder, getting ready to leave.

“Alright, I gotta make sure that Shane isn’t gonna do something stupid, like try to kill Rosita while I ain’t looking." His expression grows pensive. "Though she has been a pain in my ass lately, starving herself and shit. Maybe a lil’ guilt trip from dear ol’ step-dad here might shake her out of it. Can’t have her die on me yet. Not until I’ve made her an offer. Or at the very least until she tells me how she got that bullet.”

The short relief of knowing that Rosita is still alive is trampled by the image of her, alone and desperate in a dark cell, unable to fight back in any other way than by refusing food.

Carl has never been that close to Rosita, they didn’t talk much mainly because they had nothing to say to each other, but they had their little moments. Silent moments like a grateful nod when they shared whatever berry or edible root they scavenged on their long walk to Washington; delighted laughs when the rain would finally come, filling their empty water bottles and cooling their skin scorched by the summer sun; a friendly hand on a shoulder to signal the end of a night watch. They didn’t need to share words to know that they were family, bound together by months spent on the road, linked by the common trauma of Terminus and the deep-seated knowledge that they were different from the other people in Alexandria, forever changed by what they had seen and done together.

He doesn’t blame Rosita for trying to kill Negan, doesn’t even blame her for what happened to his eye, and hearing Negan making fun of her like that, turning her grief and her pain to ridicule, is unbearable.

“You killed the man she loved, what else did you expect?” he spits.

Negan stops in his tracks and turns around slowly, eyes narrowed. Whatever light mood may have filled the infirmary after Shane’s departure, Carl has successfully squashed it.

“What I expected,” Negan says, slowly and carefully like Carl is especially slow on the uptake, “was to send a message to the bunch of assholes who killed my men. And, by the way, I still haven’t received a proper ‘thank you’ here. There were more than a dozen guys at the satellite outpost. Twenty if you count Timmy’s group, who you guys blew up with a fucking bazooka. And you’re here giving me shit for bashing two guys’ heads in with a baseball bat? See how the math doesn’t really add up here?”

He strides forward, until he’s standing right at the edge of the bed, the power imbalance between them glaringly obvious with Carl’s lying down, and the asshole knows it. Negan towers over him, twisting Lucille’s handle between his gloved fingers, his face a dangerous mask of intimidation.

There is little chance that he’s actually going to do anything to him, Carl knows, not after spending so many valuable resources on him at a time when medical supplies are rarer than gold. Still, Carl hates the way he instinctively recoils into his pillows. His hands are closed into fists on top of the bedsheets and he’s all too aware of his own vulnerability, no weapon, no physical strength, not even the will to do anything but glare up while Negan is still looking down at him.

“You know why I chose Red?” Negan continues. “Because, let’s be honest, that whole eeny-meeny-miny-moe bullshit was just for show. I knew exactly who I was gonna kill the minute I laid eyes on you lot. I chose him, because that ginger bastard was looking at me the same damn way you’re looking at me now. The same way you’ve been looking at me since you and I met, in fact. But here’s the thing, Carl: you got a pass because it _amused_ me to see a kid acting like a fearless little shit while everyone else was shaking in their boots like a bunch of pussies. You got a pass because I thought that your little show of bravado was the most adorable thing I’d seen in a while. But ginger cunt? He wasn’t cute, he was fucking rude and I put him back in his place. And you know the worst thing? I was ready to settle just for him. In my immense mercy, I was ready to settle the score of twenty of my men against just one of yours. But then that black chick took a fucking swing at me and so Asian boy had to go down to make sure that you fuckers learned your lesson.”

His words are obviously meant to belittle Carl, and they do just that. He feels like a caged dog, trapped and helpless, clawing at the bars in a show of menace but, at the end of the day, utterly harmless. Negan drives the final nail into him when he bends down slowly, resting his free hand on the pillow next to Carl’s mangled face, his peppermint and leather smell like a punch to the nose after so many hours spent around Tanya and Frankie and their delicate floral scent. Carl instinctively wants to get away from him but there is nowhere to go and he looks up defiantly into Negan’s gray eyes, unwilling to back down from a fight he’s already lost.

“So let me make myself perfectly clear, kid,” the man whispers, which is somewhat even more frightening in the quiet seclusion of the infirmary. They’re alone here and there is no one to witness anything that Negan might do if Carl pushes him over the edge. He can feel Negan’s heat radiating off him, can smell the gun oil and the turpentine he uses to clean Lucille, can see the neon light of the infirmary reflected on the glossy fabric of his jacket. Distantly, Carl notes that it’s the closest they’ve ever been. “I’m grateful for you saving my life, and I’ve got a _lot_ of nice things planned for you. But if you keep looking at me like that, like I’m some shit you just can’t scrape off your shoe, then I’ll just have to let all of Carson’s hard work go to waste and crack the rest of your fucking head open. Finish what Rosita started. Are we clear?”

As terrible as it is, the threat is familiar by now. All that’s missing is the warning weight of Lucille on his own shoulder and it would be like it was in the mess hall, when Negan was two seconds away from killing him in front of all the other Saviors.

Strangely, it’s easier to have Negan be angry at him. Without even noticing it, Carl’s gotten used to the man going off on him, taunting and demeaning him. It’s easier to handle this than to hear him do the same to Rosita. It still hurts his pride to lower his gaze, to focus on the patch of skin where Negan’s black and silver stubble peaks out from his red scarf, but at least it’s something Carl’s already done before.

They stay like that for a few seconds, Carl submitting silently and Negan breathing evenly above him, until the gloved hand pushes off from his pillow and Negan starts walking away.

“Good boy. Don’t fill up on those candies before bed. They’re bad for your teeth.”

**

Carl dreams of Beth.

He doesn’t know why, but he does. It’s strange because his dreams of Beth usually involve Carol and Hershel, a herd of walkers like an ocean of death flooding inside the prison, Shane and baby Lori slipping out of his grip, leaving him stranded and alone, until he wakes up drenched in a cold sweat. But this dream is different. They’re at the prison, or what the prison would have looked like if it had been built over the Greene farm. There are cells and bunk beds and iron bars among the lace doilies and porcelain china of the Greene kitchen where Beth is preparing a meal, her long blonde hair braided like strands of gold over her shoulder. When she turns toward Carl with a smile, her eyes are bluer than he remembers and she smiles softly, kindly back at him.

 _Remember when I had the biggest crush on you?_ He wants to ask. _Remember when I thought I’d protect you from everything bad until I was old enough for us to fall in love and be a family with Lori and Maggie and Hershel and Glenn?_

He doesn’t say anything in the end, and when he wakes up, he’s so used to nightmares that it feels confusing to wake up from a nice dream.

**

Days pass slowly while he’s in the infirmary. Carson has decided that he’s well enough to be slowly weaned off pain-killers, so every waking moment is excruciatingly painful and his sleep, now narcotic-free, is never deep enough to truly rest him.

Every day brings a new wife to keep him company, all of them making him more uncomfortable than the next with their perfectly clean fingernails and rosy cheeks. One night, after spending the whole day with nothing to do but watch Amber cover every single one of her finger and toe with nail polish, Carl dreams of Beth, Jessie, Enid, Rosita, Sasha and Maggie, all watching over him in black dresses and heels. When he wakes up, dawn barely breaking outside, he throws himself out of bed and ignores Carson’s alarmed warnings. He walks around the infirmary as the sun slowly rises, choking back pained moans and using his IV stand as support. By the time he’s circled the whole room, he’s shaking like a newborn fawn and drenched in sweat, but it still feels like a victory.

 _Pain is in the mind_ , Shane used to tell him back at the prison, when he was secretly teaching Carl how to put someone in a choke hold while also practicing how to get out of one. It left Carl wheezing, his neck, arms and torso black and blue from Shane’s grip on him. _You stay in pain long enough, you’ll learn to ignore it. Power through it. You just gotta remember that pain is in the mind._

 _Pain is in the mind_ , Carl repeats to himself like a mantra, while Carson fusses over him.

With the morning comes bird songs outside and Tanya, book firmly in hand, ready to ignore Carl for the entire day, a favor that Carl is only too happy to return. He does another lap of the infirmary at noon, under Carson’s fretting eye and Tanya’s bored expression, and a final one at sundown so that when he ultimately collapses onto his bed at night, he’s too exhausted to dream.

**

Now that Carl can move around, time passes by quicker, only because he spends each day confronted to a new challenge he has no idea how to overcome. He keeps bumping into things because his depth perception is fucked. Whenever he reaches his hand out to grab something, his brain just can’t seem to accept the fact that he misses each time. He keeps jumping every time Carson materializes next to him, because apparently everything on his right is now a giant blind spot from where anyone can sneak up on him.

It’s infuriating to feel helpless even when he’s inside the walls of the Sanctuary, but he knows that out there, in the wild crawling with walkers, his new disability will be terrifying on a whole new level.

“You have to give yourself time,” Carson tells him as he watches Carl struggle through the simple act of putting on a sock. “You’re already on your feet far sooner than I expected. You should focus on the small wins.”

Carl doesn’t even bother with a reply, too busy trying to make sense of the disorganized clutter of sensations coming to him, his brain still refusing to acknowledge the fact that what he sees with his eye contradicts what he feels with his hands.

He will never be able to confess the amount of time it takes him to get dressed, but once he is, the door to the infirmary opens to reveal a wife he’s never seen here before, but who he already knows.

Sherry, Dwight’s former wife.

“Hi,” she says, looking at Carl with a neutral expression that is already a step up compared to the likes of Tanya and Frankie. “Hi, Emmett.”

“Sherry,” Carson answers her with a mystified smile.

She walks slowly through the room, toward the chair next to Carl’s bed, where the other wives have left some essentials: a pile of yellowed magazines, a few bottles of nail polish, a nail file, some books and a deck of cards. The sound of her heels on the concrete floor is like a delicate tempo and Carl can see Carson following the graceful lines of her legs with his eyes, only hastily turning away when she finally sits facing the bed. If Sherry noticed the doctor’s eyes on her, she doesn’t show any sign of caring. She crosses one leg and her slim hands go straight for the deck of cards.

“Wanna play?”

The question takes him by surprise. None of the wives have ever bothered to interact with him. Amber asked him what he wanted to talk about once, and when he’d simply shrugged, she had spent the rest of the day focused on her nails. That was the extent of his contact with them.

But Sherry is looking at him patiently, shuffling the cards in no apparent hurry, like coming down to the infirmary to babysit him is the most natural thing in the world.

“Sure,” he eventually answers.

They play double solitaire while Carson hovers far closer than he usually does if it’s just Carl in the room. Simply stacking the cards properly demands incredible efforts from Carl, and it’s not long before a migraine starts piercing through his skull, but he powers through it. If Sherry is annoyed at the time it takes him to draw and place each card, she is incredibly good at hiding it. She doesn’t look resentful like Tanya, or even bored like Amber, her face is just the right amount of neutral and focused on the game.

Eventually, Carson is called out to deal with an accident at the forge and once he’s reluctantly left, it’s just Sherry and Carl in the room. They play in companionable silence until they run out of cards and then Carl just nods when Sherry offers to play again.

“He likes you,” she says as she reshuffles the card.

“Carson?”

The corner of her mouth lifts up, like they just shared a secret joke.

“Negan,” she corrects.

Carl frowns at her, and she elaborates:

“I heard what happened before you got shot, at the market and then in the Saviors’ mess hall. He likes you.”

Carl snorts. “He keeps threatening to kill me whenever I piss him off.”

“And yet, he hasn’t.”

“Not so far.”

Sherry places her cards in neat row on the covers.

“He’ll hurt you, you know?”

Her voice doesn’t waver, still perfectly even, like they’re just talking about the weather.

“That’s what he does to the people he likes. He hurts us to see how much we can take. It’s his idea of fun.”

She’s right, he knows that. He’s seen it first-hand, the way Negan keeps taunting him, humiliating him, pressing Lucille on top of his shoulder, knowing exactly that every time he does, Carl keeps seeing Glenn and Abraham’s bloody faces. And yet, it irks him to have Sherry say it out loud, as if someone else acknowledging it makes it worse.

“He hasn’t done anything to me,” he points out, because it’s technically true.

“Not so far,” she replies, her eyes never leaving the cards, a dam of paper delicately erected between them.

They play double solitaire until Carl is confident enough to pile on the cards right on his first try. Then, Sherry offers to play a game more challenging to Carl’s hand-eye coordination. It’s the slowest game of slap jack that he’s ever played, but Sherry doesn’t show any signs of caring, her patience virtually limitless. After that, it’s only right for Carl to offer to share some of the candies that keep appearing on his nightstand and they split an Almond Joy while waiting for lunch. By the time Carson comes back from the forge, his lab coat speckled with blood, Carl has managed to quicken the pace enough that he can lose at slap jack with his dignity still mostly intact.

He doesn’t expect Shane to enter the infirmary after Carson, his own shoulder bloody under his torn off shirt. Carl looks up in alarm and Shane stops in his tracks, starring at him and Sherry like he’s stumbled into another dimension.

“What happened?” Carl asks.

There wasn’t any pick-up from any of the other communities planned today, and they haven’t heard any commotion inside the Sanctuary.

Shane blinks and shakes his head before stepping fully inside the room.

“Some dipshit never learned how to tie a knot properly and a bunch of scrap metal fell down on some workers,” he grunts.

“Anyone injured?” Sherry asks, her eyes going up and down Shane’s bloody frame.

“Nothing too bad,” Carson answers from where he’s getting disinfectant and gauze from a drawer. “Shane got the worst of it when he helped lift up a metal beam full of rust and probably tetanus. Hope you were up to date on your shots before.”

Shane snorts and goes to rest a hip on the bed next to Carl’s. He looks at the card games on the covers, Sherry herself and finally Carl.

“How you doing, son?”

“Fine,” Carl answers mechanically.

Sherry gathers the cards between them delicately.

“He’s making great progress,” she says.

Shane frowns and Carl can feel the back of his neck heating up. Being able to grab and place a card with mild accuracy isn’t “progress” for Shane. Anything short of Carl shooting a target dead center twenty feet away is a step back, at best, a complete let down at worst.

To add further humiliation, Carson chimes in as he approaches to start disinfecting Shane’s shoulder:

“Miraculous progress, even! Already on his feet, playing cards. I wouldn’t have thought that possible so soon.”

“Yeah, looks like a real miracle,” Shane mutters doubtfully and Carl lowers his head.

 _We’re soldiers, you and I,_ Shane used to say to him before. And now, Carl can barely put on a sock without breaking into a sweat and his little sister can play cards better than him.

When Sherry tilts the cards toward him, silently asking if he’s up for another round, Carl just shakes his head. Next to them, Carson starts stitching up the angry gash on Shane’s shoulder.

“That looks bad,” she remarks, shuffling the cards between her long manicured fingers. Shane turns his attention away from Carl and shrugs his good shoulder.

“Nah, it’s nothing.”

“Tough guy, uh?”

He gives her a cocky smile.

“When I have to be.”

She looks amused and Carl sees Carson fidgeting next to them. His voice, when he’s done stitching, is distinctly colder than it was before.

“All done, Shane.”

“Thanks, doc.”

He straightens and Sherry turns toward Carl.

“I’m gonna have a quick smoke. You’ll be alright?”

When he shrugs in answer, Shane snaps at him:

“Manners, boy.”

Carl springs up instinctively where he’s seated on the bed, like a soldier surprised by his drill sergeant.

“Sorry,” he says to Shane, and then to Sherry: “I’ll be fine.”

She looks between them, her green eyes probably seeing more than she lets on, before taking a cigarette and a lighter out of the cleavage of her dress. Carl sees Shane’s own eyes straying, following the fluid motion.

“I won’t be long,” Sherry says, walking toward the door.

Shane goes to open the door for her and, before closing it, he reminds Carl:

“Keep your head down. Don’t do anything stupid.”

**

Jessie cooes over baby Lori in their kitchen in Alexandria, rocking her and whispering sweet praises while Shane looks on approvingly and Carl himself sits on the couch, cautious about having her inside his home, holding his sister. Jessie is the furthest thing from a threat and yet Carl can’t help being wary.

The woman looks up, clearing her throat, self-conscious to have the both of them staring at her in silence.

“So, anyway, I didn’t come here just to steal some cuddles from this little one, no matter how adorable she is. I wanted to know if you guys would consider coming over for dinner tomorrow night.”

Carl frowns, taken aback, while Shane’s lips twist into a wry grin.

“Thank you very much for the invitation. We appreciate it. ‘Been a while since we’ve had a home cooked meal. I’m afraid the extent of our knowledge in the kitchen is heating up some canned beans.”

Jessie chuckles and the whole scene feels surreal, so domestic and mundane after everything that happened to them. It’s like having a horror movie interrupted by an old re-run of _I Love Lucy._

“Won’t that be weird?” Carl can’t help asking.

Considering that Shane killed Jessie’s husband in front of everyone in the town square just a few weeks ago, it seems like a legitimate question.

“Carl!” Shane barks, making Jessie jump and Carl straighten from his slouched position on the couch.

“I – No, no it’s okay,” she tries but Shane just shakes his head.

“This kind woman offers to cook for you, welcome you in her house and that’s how you thank her? Is that how your mom raised you?”

It’s a cheap shot and Carl is angry at himself for how easily it gets to him.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters.

“No, no, don’t be,” Jessie insists. “It’s… You’re right, it must look strange, I know. But… I’ve made my peace with it. He was a troubled man when I met him, but he became a bad man during our marriage. I should have left him a long time ago, and I tried to but… being a single mother in the state of the world right now… I just thought if I stuck around long enough I might change him. I realize how stupid it was now, and so do Ron and Sam. They know we’re better off without him.”

She looks down, stroking Lori’s tiny little hand with her thumb. Shane frowns at her and takes a step forward, his hand hovering before clenching back into a fist by his side.

“Hey, hey, it’s not your fault. Men like that, they’re bullies. They take advantage. None of this is on you.”

Jessie smiles up at him, eyes shiny. Shane takes another step forward, and it strikes Carl how someone who doesn’t know them might look at the picture they form now: Shane, standing tall in the sheriff’s uniform Deanna gave him, Jessie, soft and bashful, baby Lori in her arms. The perfect suburban family.

“And, hey, if you want, I could teach you and your boys how to protect yourselves. We used to do it back at the sheriff station. Hell, I’ve taught kids younger than them how to safely handle a gun.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t want to impose, you’re busy already and…”

“Nah, it’s no bother. And it will give you peace of mind, trust me. I taught Carl everything I know. Anyone tries to take a shot at him now…” Shane looks back toward him, silent for a second. Carl knows what he sees. “Well, let’s just say I pity the guy who tries.”

Jessie sighs, oblivious to how truly Shane means that.

“Wow, thank you. It’s – It’s very generous of you. Now, I really owe you guys dinner. And Carl, please, come as well. You and Ron can play video games, or read comic books upstairs so you don’t get bored with me and your dad.”

Carl’s first instinct is to say no, straight and simple, but Shane raises an expectant eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, sure, thank you,” he says, uncomfortable at the way she smiles warmly back at him, like he’s somewhat just made her day.

“Thank you. I won’t be bothering you guys any longer.”

“You’re really not,” Shane assures her as he takes Lori from her arms before walking her to the door, the perfect gentleman neighbor.

**

When Dr. Carson tells him that he’s well enough to leave the infirmary in the morning, Carl spends the night tossing and turning, vibrating with the anticipation of finally leaving the confines of the small room and its antiseptic smell, but also anxious at being thrown back into the world of the Sanctuary in his new state.

Carl isn’t naive enough to think that things can just go back to the way they were before. Like Negan said, the Sanctuary is a zoo, and even though all the animals are made docile by the fear he inspires, they’re still animals, and Carl is gonna have to face them on his own from now on. He can’t rely on Shane, who hasn’t come back to see him ever since that day with Sherry – which is for the best, since Carl doesn’t want to see his own uselessness reflected back at him in Shane’s eyes. He can’t count on blending in and being ignored by the Saviors anymore either. No matter what he wishes, he knows there is no way in hell he’ll be assigned to watch duty ever again, not when he can’t see or aim properly. He probably won’t be allowed to go out to pick up supplies from the other communities anymore either.

Which means, he won’t be a Savior anymore. He’ll be out and exposed and vulnerable to the hierarchy of the Sanctuary.

He’s seen it happen several times before, to Saviors who fucked up their jobs so badly they were sent to remote outposts in the middle of fucking nowhere, with orders to scavenge whatever they could find until they redeemed themselves in Negan's eyes. He’s seen workers tumble down the food chain and end up as slaves, without even the luxury of earning points, sleeping in cells and replacing the walkers on the fence and generally cleaning up the shit left behind by everyone else. Just because there is an order to Negan’s world doesn’t mean it’s a fixed hierarchy. Anyone can go up or down depending on how useful they are or the mood he's in.

During the night, when his heart is thumping so loudly in his chest that it feels like it might explode, Carl tries to remind himself that he saved Negan’s life. It’s gotta count for something. Surely Negan isn’t planning on throwing him to the wolves at Sanctuary, letting him fall deeper and deeper down the ladder until he’s the one sleeping in a cell, wrestling walkers on the fence with nothing but his bare hands. _I’ve got a lot of nice things planned for you_ , he said. Which means that Negan must still have a use for him here, even if he’s not a Savior anymore. Perhaps if he plays his cards right, Carl can convince Negan to send him back to Alexandria, to watch over things and make sure there are no more attempts like Rosita’s. He could make himself useful that way, even if he can’t fight like he used to. He can still protect Lori, even with just the one eye. He has to be able to protect her.

Otherwise, he’ll be useless. A burden. A dead weight.

Shane doesn’t bother with those.

Negan doesn’t look like the type to carry them around either.

**

“What the hell was that?”

“Watch your mouth.”

For once, Carl is too pissed off to heed off the warning.

“Seriously. What is this? We’re having dinner with them? Why? I thought you said you didn’t want them to make us weak.”

Shane blows out a sigh, his hand coming up to scratch at the back of his head. Jessie cut his hair recently, and it looks just like it used to before everything.

“And I still don’t, Carl, but this is – this is different. You’ll get it when you’re older, alright?”

If that’s an answer, it doesn’t make any sense to him.

“So what, now you want me to go play video games? You told me specifically not to spend time with the other kids here. You said I was a soldier.”

Suddenly, Shane’s fist flies into the wall, making Carl jump back as the man's nostrils flare, enraged. After a few seconds of silence, Shane takes a deep breath and says, more calmly:

“You _are_ a soldier, son. But this, living a normal life, this is important too while we’re inside these walls. We need to blend in, otherwise we’ll never get these people’s trust. So for one night, I need you to pretend, alright? Just for one night, pretend that you care about stupid games and comic books. And then the next day, you and I will go back to doing the work. The real work. Alright?”

Carl wants to scream that no, it’s not alright, nothing about this is alright. This new Shane, the one who plays pretend, the fake pillar of his community, the phony neighborly cop, it unsettles Carl, like he’s watching a bad movie adaptation of what their lives in Georgia used to be. Except that in this version, Shane and Jessie have been cast as the new Rick and Lori Grimes.

But he knows that he has no other choice than to nod, so he does.

The next day, they drop baby Lori at Glenn and Maggie’s and knock on Jessie’s door, Shane freshly shaven and wearing a button down. When it opens, Jessie’s smile is made brighter by her yellow sundress:

“Hey, fellas. Don’t you look dashing! I invited Enid to join us, so Carl could have some company that’s not just us, Andersons.”

**

Everyone kneels when Negan enters the infirmary the next morning. Carl is sitting on the bed, trying to hide how much he struggles doing something as simple as tying his boots. He straightens up, watching Negan as the man savors the show of submission in front of him. Carson was in the middle of preparing clean bandages for Carl to dress his wound on his own, while stealing quick glances at Sherry, who was back on babysitting duty for his last day in the infirmary.

Sauntering forward, Negan extends a hand to help Sherry back up, like some twisted parody of a fairytale prince, except his other hand is holding Lucille instead of a medieval sword. Behind him, Fat Joey leers at Sherry’s exposed neckline.

Negan then turns around, considering Carl with a tilt of the head, his gray eyes twinkling with mischief.

“You know what, kid? I’m just thinking… I can’t remember the last time you knelt for me. Every time I see you, you just keep squirreling away into dark corners while everyone else kneels.”

This, of course, is both true and intentional: a perks of being invisible at the Sanctuary that Carl enjoyed before Negan sent him on the market errand. Apparently, that’s over as well.

“You want me to kneel?” Carl asks, and even though he’s just dreading the humiliation of having his new lack of balance and coordination exposed, it still sounds defiant even to his own ears.

Thankfully, Negan seems to be in a particularly good mood and he only grins, stepping closer and bending down slightly, like he’s about to tell Carl a secret.

“As much as I’d enjoy that – and I really would –, I don’t think I’ve got the time it’d take you to get down and back up again. So we’re just gonna have to put a pin on that one. Now let’s go, kid,” he exclaims, banging Lucille on the metal railing at the end of the bed.

“Where are you taking him?” Sherry interrupts and Carl can pinpoint the exact moment Negan’s attention is being redirected, like a bloodhound sniffing out a new trail. It makes him think about what Sherry said to him before. _That’s what he does to the people he likes._ _He hurts us to see how much we can take._ Carl didn’t ponder on the “us” before, but now, he’s actually witnessing it, Negan’s attention shifting away from him and onto Sherry, like the deadliest spotlight there is. Negan’s smirk is all teeth, wicked and hungry, as he prowls forward until he’s right up in Sherry’s personal space, using the long line of his body to tower over her, no doubt to unsettle her the same way it does Carl. It’s strange, to watch it happen from the outside instead of experiencing it from the inside.

“Not that it’s any of your business, dear wife, but I’m gonna show Carl here the gifts I’ve got planned for him.”

“Any gift from you always comes with a price.”

In spite of her quiet tone, it’s the first time Carl's ever seen anyone standing up to Negan so plainly.

Negan, however, doesn’t seem rattled, and his smile only widens, fond and amused.

“Baby, baby, how you hurt me,” he whispers, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. Carl has to look away, his skin crawling. “Don’t you worry about a thing, honey. I ain’t gonna let anything happen to my new best guy. Now, on your feet, kid. I ain’t got all day.”

Begrudgingly, Carl takes the bandages from Carson and follows Negan out, Fat Joey on their heels. It’s good to finally be on his feet outside of the infirmary, and when they reach the room he shares with Shane, Carl is surprised at how much it feels like coming home. Negan opens the door with a flourish and leans against the frame, hip cocked:

“I have to say, this whole step-dad and step-son bunking together? That is some weird-ass shit right there. I mean, you guys are both full-blooded, adult males. There’s no excuse for you sleeping in the same room when there are others available. How do you guys even jack off? Please, tell me you don’t have to listen to Shane while he’s rubbing one off under the covers.”

As much as Negan’s usual grossness exasperates Carl, it’s still an improvement compared to the company he kept in the infirmary this past week. So he stays silent and keeps his eyes firmly planted on the ground, still wary about the last threat Negan made against his life.

“Here,” the man says, nudging him forward by bumping the top of Lucille against his shoulder. “A gift from me. You gotta work on your aim. I want to see you hit the bullseye at least twenty times in a row before I let you waste bullets in real target practice outside.”

When Carl looks up, he sees a dartboard hanging on the wall next to their little kitchen counter. It’s an insulting joke, one that feels like a slap in the face when they both know that his aim is fucked, possibly forever. This time, he can’t help glaring at the man.

Though Negan keeps smiling, there is a cutting edge to it, a warning hidden in the crinkles at the corner of his gray eyes.

“What have I told you about that damn stink eye you keep givin’ me?”

Reluctantly, Carl lowers his gaze again and tries his best to keep a level tone.

“Thanks. I’ll practice. Can I be alone now?”

Negan clicks his tongue, disappointed at his lack of enthusiasm.

“That’s just the first of my gifts, kiddo. How about you stop being an asshole for two seconds so I can show you the rest, uh? Let’s go upstairs.”

Negan whistles as they climb up, and Carl is confused about their destination for a second, until he gets his bearing again and realizes that they’re going toward the wives’ living quarters. When Negan opens the door, Carl is once again faced with the women he’s been forced to cohabit with during his recovery, all of them lounging in a luxurious room filled with velvet couches, pearl-colored chairs and dark wooden furniture. At the end of the room, Tanya is shaking a cocktail behind a fully-stocked bar. Negan lets him take in the room for a few seconds, watching him with an anticipatory grin. When Carl finally turns toward him, puzzled about what they’re doing here, Negan drapes a languid arm over his shoulders.

“This,” he says, visibly reveling in how uncomfortable Carl is at their sudden proximity, “is my gift to you. See, kid, if this had been before, you’d be in the backseat of your mom’s Chevy right now, trying to cope a feel from a cute cheerleader after school, all fumblin’ and tumblin’, wondering how to unhook a bra without looking like a complete idiot, while at the same time trying not to cream your jeans the minute your girl lets you slip a hand under her skirt. Unfortunately for you, the dead are a-risin' and the freaking apocalypse is a-comin' so the best you can hope for in terms of cherry-popping these days is probably a quickie in the woods with your pants half-down, constantly looking over your shoulder in fear of dead ones. So, like I said, this, is my gift to you. You get to pick one, whichever you want, as long as she says yes. She says yes, you guys get a room and a whole evening to yourselves. Some nice food, some music, a bed… That’s basically the apocalypse equivalent of getting a nice limo and a five-star hotel room for your prom date. You’re welcome.”

Carl listens to him, as if in a daze. Around them, the wives barely pay them any attention, talking quietly among themselves, mainly appearing bored about the whole spectacle unfolding their way. Once Negan is done talking, Carl blinks up at him, waiting for the punchline. When none comes, he asks:

“You’re joking right?”

“Kid, I’m as serious as a heart attack right now. Just take your pick.”

Negan is looking at him expectantly and Carl realizes that he has to say aloud what he thinks should have been plain obvious:

“No.”

It’s Negan’s turn to blink.

“…No?”

“No. Thank you.”

“You…” he starts, before stopping abruptly, like Carl has actually managed to shock him into silence. The arm he has around Carl’s shoulders retracts and Negan takes a step back, incredulous.

“Are you kidding me right now? I am literally handing you the best, probably most formative experience of your life on a silver platter here, and the only thing you can say is ‘no’? Jesus, what the fuck has Shane been teaching you? I mean, I can’t believe I’m even saying this but you do know what sex is, right? You and I don’t need to have the birds and the bees conversation?”

Carl rolls his eye in answer and Negan huffs.

“Well, what the hell is your issue then? Here I am, offering you a buttload of gorgeous, nicely-dressed, sweet-smelling women and you… Shit, is that the problem here? You into dudes? Alright, I ain’t gonna lie, I was gunning for the full high school prom night package here, but if you’d rather go down the college sexual experimentation fantasy while losing your V-card, who am I to judge? I’m sure I can arrange something for you.”

Negan’s expression grows thoughtful, probably considering who in Sanctuary could be open to the endeavor, and Carl interrupts him hastily:

“No, I’m not – look, I don’t want to. With anyone. I just want to be left alone.”

“Well shit, kid. This was supposed to be my gift to you. What else am I supposed to get you now? I thought that giving you the perfect night to empty those giant, steel-clad balls of yours was a good repayment for saving my life, but clearly you ain’t into it. Which was supposed to be the whole point, by the way. So what the hell do you want instead?”

“I don’t know. I don’t need anything. Just – fine, comic books.”

“Comic books?” Negan repeats, disbelieving.

“Yeah, alright? You want to give me something, just give me comic books.”

“Comic – Are you shitting me right now? Jesus…”

Negan runs a gloved hand through his hair, looking around as if in need of support.

“I swear, kid, sometimes I forget that underneath all that tough nut, ice cold, badass exterior of yours, you really are just a kid. I mean how old are you? I’ve never even asked. Like, seventeen, eighteen?”

“I’m eighteen,” Carl grits out.

“Jesus. Never mind the candy I’ve been giving you, someone needs to strap you to a chair and force-feed you PB&J until you put on a few pounds. Eighteen, Jesus Christ. Fine, fucking fine. Fat Joey here will get you your comic books.”

“Where am I gonna find that?”

All the lightheartedness of the moment disappears as Negan turns around slowly, an eyebrow raised, like he can’t believe that Joey just interrupted him. Judging from the suddenly livid expression on Joey’s face, he can’t believe he just did either.

“I’ll find them,” the Savior squeaks before hurrying out, almost dropping his rifle in his haste.

Negan looks back at Carl, a _can you believe this fucking guy?_ look that is strangely intimate. Like they have the kind of relationship where they can exchange silent jokes.

“Well, if you ain’t gonna take the pussy I’m offering, go back to your room. Rest, eat, wash off that disgusting infirmary smell, whatever you want. But I expect you to report for work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in my office at noon sharp. Do not, I insist, do not fucking be late or be prepared to face Lucille's wrath. Now fuck off.”

Carl instinctively starts walking away, until the words catch up to his brain.

“Work?”

Negan scoffs.

“I’m sorry, does this look like a fucking resort to you? Do you see me sipping Mai Tais on the beach? Yes, work. I’ve invested a whole lotta time and resources in you, kid. I expect it to pay off. So from now on, every day from noon to sundown, you’re gonna be my assistant. You’re gonna follow me around, watch, listen, learn, and generally do whatever the fuck I need you to do. And don’t expect to sleep in in the mornings. I want you working on your aim every second you’re not with me. First with those darts I generously provided for you, then with a gun aimed at dead ones in the courtyard, until I feel confident that you can leave the Sanctuary without shooting someone in the ass. Anything you wanna add to that?”

Negan’s tone doesn’t suffer any objection and to hear him have so much faith in Carl’s ability to get his aim back is entirely unexpected.

“I… No, I – it’s just I thought you were gonna send me away.”

“Send you away? Kid, I don’t know what kind of crack-head-level, bullshit-inducing drugs Carson’s been feeding you, but you ain’t going anywhere. What makes you think otherwise?”

Carl looks away, suddenly self-conscious.

“It’s – I mean… I just thought – with the eye, you know.”

Negan’s surveys him with his piercing gaze for a moment, before his expression turns softer. His tone when he speaks is understanding:

“Carl, I’m not sending you away. Like I said, I’ve invested in you and I plan on having you around here for a long time. So you’re stuck with me, kid.”

_To be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, kudos and comments are deeply appreciated :)


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